


Original Lifeline

by BlueJayRose



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Autumn, Consent Issues, Dirty Talk, Domestic, Fluff and Smut, Food as a Metaphor for Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Not Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Past Rape/Non-con, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, Snow, Touch-Starved, Winter, actual food this time, adopting Bucky like a feral cat, bucky vs. spaghetti, lots of past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, messy eaters make better lovers, mute!bucky, overpriced coffee, very slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-09-10 18:11:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8927041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueJayRose/pseuds/BlueJayRose
Summary: Steve is haunted by the ghosts of his past. One ghost in particular. But he doesn’t mind very much.
----
Unrepentant tooth-rotting fluff, garnished with just a teeny tiny sprig of angst. For flavour.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this monster over a year ago. I'm starting posting now because otherwise there's no way it will ever see the light of day. It's still a work in progress, so subject to change, though it is currently nearly finished at 40k.  
> Warning: this fic contains no actual Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Years, only the general feel of the Christmas season, you dig? I don't know what date any of it is, apart from after Winter Soldier, and none of that other stuff happened. I love Civil War, but I don't even know what an Ultron is? BruceNat? Never heard of it.
> 
> Title from 'Third Eye' by Florence and the Machine

Hey, look up!

You don't have to be a ghost

Here amongst the living

You are flesh and blood

And you deserve to be loved

And you deserve what you are given

 

When Steve first got out of the ice, he’d opted to live in Brooklyn, pretty near his old neighbourhood. He’d felt at home and alienated at the same time. The streets were the same but the buildings were different. Almost every street had a memory or two attached to it, his childhood friends phantoms he could almost touch around him, but this place had not been his since he left in his brand new big bones for Captain America’s first publicity tour in 1943. And then after the attack on New York, half the streets were filled with rubble. You could walk along one street and believe that everything was twenty-first century normal, and then turn a corner straight into a scene from London in the blitz. The echoes of carnage were everywhere, in grim faces and boarded up abandoned homes, bankrupt businesses. It was like war-torn Europe all over again. It was still Brooklyn, but it wasn’t really the place he’d grown up anymore. It was a graveyard to him, and it’s nobody’s fault, but it’s been desecrated by time and people. Living there was like torturing himself with nostalgia for a time that was both four and seventy years ago. 

Steve decided, after a while, that he did have a place here in the twenty-first century, but it wasn’t back in Brooklyn. So he’d moved to DC, to be closer to SHIELD’s main base of operations, away from the destruction and chaos of the rebuild, the echoes of conflict and the battle spread into every district, and away from the ghosts that haunted every avenue of his old home. He ran missions for SHIELD, made friends with Natasha and Sam and everything was going pretty well until SHIELD fell like a shoddy facade to reveal Hydra underneath. 

Now Washington is full of memories of battle too, and the ghost whose absence Steve felt more painfully than any other is flesh and blood. Bucky is still alive, and Steve will do anything to find him. Natasha gives him a file detailing all the hideous ways that Hydra tried to destroy Bucky’s mind and soul, and Steve is sick in the toilet of his DC apartment. He prays that the fact that Bucky saved him from the Potomac means they failed until he almost believes it. Despite the days-long sleep deprivation, months-long solitary confinement, medical experimentation, surgery without anaesthesia, beatings, whippings, brainwashing, electrocution, perception-altering hallucinogenic drugs - 

Sam is willing to help him follow any leads to his possible location, but there is no way of knowing where Bucky’s gone. Steve asks a favour from Stark, to get Jarvis to keep a look out on all the available surveillance feeds for Bucky’s face, and Stark says he can make sure that if any camera, _anywhere_ , catches sight of Bucky’s face then Steve will know. It’s probably invading Bucky’s freedom, but Steve needs to know he’s safe so badly that he tells Stark “That would be great, thank you,” and Stark says, “No problem, and hey, call me Tony. I hear that mine was one of the lives you saved from Hydra’s Project Kill Everybody, so consider this a little payback, yeah?”

So Steve doesn’t know where Bucky’s gone, but he’s satisfied himself that he’s done all he can do to look for him. He has literally no clue of Bucky’s whereabouts, after all. He guesses that Bucky could have gone to some of the recently revealed Hydra bases - to report back or destroy them, he can’t know - but those are all being taken apart by SHIELD in it’s various remaining forms, and other national and international law-keeping agencies, and there have been no sightings of him. 

Or maybe he has no idea how to function by himself anymore and he’s just wandering the streets of DC aimlessly, or maybe he ran and he’s homeless somewhere in the US - and Steve tries not to worry too much that that’s true, because with Tony’s tech looking for him, they’ll probably find him soon enough if it is the case. 

Or maybe, just maybe, an amnesiac Bucky would try to go home to what was familiar to him, like Steve did first thing out of the ice, and come home to Brooklyn.

It’s all just wild speculation, really, but Steve has a hunch. He moves back to Brooklyn. He’s surrounded by ghosts again, and he’s waiting and hoping for one in particular.

 

 

 

He waits for a week before he realises that he didn’t need to wait at all. 

Steve doesn’t spend much time in his apartment. He goes out on missions with Natasha and Sam which are organised by the remains of SHIELD within Stark Industries, most of which consist of taking down the few Hydra bases whose whereabouts were harder to deduce from the information dump, or whose forces are deemed out of the league of standard law enforcement agencies. He spends most of his free time at Avengers tower, with Tony, Bruce and sometimes Clint, Natasha and Thor as well. Natasha says she’s taking a well-earned vacation, and Steve is not a hundred percent sure what that means, or what she’s doing half the time when she’s not at the tower. He’s noticed that often, when Natasha leaves the tower, Clint does too. But it’s not his job to pry. Bruce mostly keeps to himself, and Tony doesn’t seem to have many hobbies outside of engineering and alcoholism. Whenever Thor comes over and brings some Asgardian liquor Steve takes advantage and gets as buzzed as his enhanced metabolism will let him. He visits Sam in DC, visits Peggy in hospital, and also spends a lot of time around the city and mostly in Central Park, drawing. Life’s not perfect, but it’s a hell of a lot better than when Sam asked him what made him happy and he didn't know. Now, he thinks he’s beginning to get an idea. 

He’s sitting out on the balcony of his apartment, eating his dinner of yesterday’s microwaved mac and cheese, enjoying the warm wind and the dying day’s sunlight on his face while he can. He has the top floor of a four story building in a residential area, much nicer than his old neighbourhood used to be, and his view of the surrounding streets is pretty good from up here. It’s still summer now, but the chill of autumn threatens the air in the mornings and at dusk, and it won’t be summer much longer. 

He’s just wondering whether Natasha would like to go with a run with him round Central Park tomorrow, or if that’s not the kind of thing she does, when he realises he’s being watched. It’s that instinctual feeling of unseen eyes watching that makes his skull itch. It’s probably nothing, quite possibly just paranoia, but he knows Natasha would tell him to trust his instincts, so he keeps an eye out. 

He watches the people on the street below, but after ten minutes he doesn’t see any of them more than once, and no one is lingering in one place for too long. He watches the windows of the buildings across the street, but no one’s paying him any attention, they’re all going about their own lives oblivious to him. He stays out of an extra five minutes after his meal is finished, scanning the roof-tops opposite, scrutinising all the windows that look dark at fist glance, but he doesn’t see anyone. 

The sky starts to darken and the air to cool, so he heads inside, chiding himself for his silliness. He never used to be this paranoid - Natasha, Clint and Tony must be rubbing off on him. He’s perfectly safe here. Natasha was irritated that he refused to allow his apartment to be monitored, in case someone broke in or tried to bug him when he was out, or asleep, but he was adamant that he wouldn’t allow any listening devices or cameras inside or around his apartment, and the remnants of SHIELD don’t have the manpower spare to do it in person. However, he did allow hair-trigger sensitive alarms at the door and windows. The windows of his new apartment are bulletproof, and the walls are reinforced. Of course, the Winter Soldier was able to shoot at him accurately through both a window and a wall at his last apartment, but Bucky’s always been an exceptional sniper, there’s really no one else who could compare, except possibly Clint, and neither of them want to kill him (he hopes). Really, there’s no need to be worried.

 

 

 

The next morning he’s back from buying milk, eggs and bread, and while he’s fumbling for the keys to his apartment building, he gets that feeling again. The one like there’s someone watching him. His spine straightens, his head snaps up, and his muscles tense. The feeling really is uncanny - he hasn’t seen anything, but this time he’s sure he’s not wrong. There is definitely someone, but he can’t see where. 

He keeps fidgeting with his pockets as if he’s looking for his keys, turns and faces the street, scanning the ground as if he thinks he’s dropped something. He watches  the street surreptitiously with his head still bowed. Natasha could probably sneakier, but he’s not a spy. He still can’t see anyone on the street who’s obviously staring at him, or lingering, and it’s still warm enough that barely anyone is covered up, all of their faces are visible. No one he glances at is wearing a wire, and he doesn’t think any of them are armed. 

He does a 360 of his whole street, and his eye catches on the alley beside his building. It’s at an angle to him, and the sun’s slant at this time of the year means that the back of the alley is still shaded even in the later morning. Perhaps someone could be hiding in there? Some hostile agent? Or, now he thinks about it, some remnant of SHIELD tasked with keeping an eye on him? Or is he still just being paranoid? 

Then he decides, screw it. He goes over to the alley, with his reusable shopping bags still in either hand, and checks it. It’s empty. There’s nothing there, just a few big plastic bins and some wayward litter. A bowl someone’s left out for alley cats filled up with milk. Steve feels foolish just standing there - there’s obviously no one there and never was. But he supposes the back wall of the alley could be scaled if you climbed on one of the bins to get there, so whoever it was could have escaped. If there was ever someone there in the first place.

He found his key ages ago now, so he goes into his building and up to his apartment, none the wiser as to whether or not someone is actually watching him. 

He’s a little worried that maybe he’s going crazy. The ghosts of Brooklyn are one thing, but he’s imagining some strange foreign presence following him now, and that probably suggests at least a little instability on his part, doesn’t it?

 

 

 

The next time he’s sitting out on his balcony it’s a quiet evening. The rush hours are over, and it’s a weekday, so most people are inside their homes, sheltering from the cooler evening air. He doesn’t really feel the cold anymore - or at least, when he does it’s so insignificant to his childhood, adolescence and young adulthood freezing cold that it barely registers to this big new body, with a healthy heart and effective circulation. Bucky had to hold him close every night just to keep him alive, although he supposes that wasn’t really a chore for either of them. Especially after Steve’s sixteenth birthday, when Bucky kissed him for the first time on the fourth of July on the roof of Steve’s building in the midst of the fireworks, and snuggling up close to him became a pleasure, rather than an exquisite kind of torture. Still, the years when cold was a risk to his life coupled with the decades he’s spent frozen in ice have really altered his perception of temperature. 

He’s sipping a coffee and watching the sunlight change and the city lights come on when he hears a scrape on the roof above him, a tiny, almost imperceptible rattle of loose dirt falling, and suddenly all the pigeons that had been settling down to roost on the roof above him flare out in the sky across the street, a rush of noise and wings.

There is someone on the roof. 

Steve is inside and the door is shut and locked behind him before he can think another thought. He backs away from the windows, although he knows that no one could possibly get through them, and he has picked up his phone before he hesitates. Who is he going to call? What is he going to say? Probably Natasha, except he thinks she’s away at the moment. Maybe Tony, except he’s really enjoying how none of his neighbours have yet clocked that he’s an avenger, due to his deliberately antisocial behaviour, and he’d like to keep it that way by avoiding a visit from Iron Man, who would probably arrive airborne in his suit. Both of them would take him seriously though, and both of them would consider this a threat, especially if he says he’s been feeling watched for a while now. 

But he hesitates. Because he’s been feeling watched for a while now, but no one’s tried to attack him, hurt him, threaten him or abduct him. If it were Hydra, that would have happened long ago. If it were an assassin, he would be dead by now. If he’s being monitored, whoever it is hasn’t bugged his apartment - there’s no way they could have avoided the alarms. An agent from whichever organisation feels he needs monitoring this week, an overzealous Captain America fan who’s upgraded to stalking, or an incredibly inept assassin; whoever it is has just made a pretty serious blunder. They have to know that he realises they’re there now, without a shadow of a doubt, considering his reaction. So maybe they’ll just go away.

And. Well. He hasn’t wanted to let himself hope for it, but. 

It could be Bucky.

He knows it’s probably stupid. Tony hasn’t picked up Bucky’s face anywhere remotely near New York, but then Tony hasn’t picked up Bucky anywhere, so he can obviously hide his face from cameras. And although there was nothing in Bucky’s behaviour on the bridge to suggest that he remembered Steve at all, Steve thought he saw something in his eyes on the helicarrier, and he had still saved Steve’s life from the Potomac. Although, Steve supposes, he had been the one to endanger it in the first place. Really, Bucky could be anywhere, but that doesn’t actually exclude Steve’s apartment. He has no reason to believe Bucky is the one here, but he also has no reason to believe he’s not. 

Bucky would never have made such a mistake as to alert his target to his presence on a mission when Steve knew him, and the Winter Soldier wouldn’t have either, but maybe Bucky’s not either of those guys anymore. Maybe Bucky doesn’t consider Steve his target anymore, which would certainly explain why he saved Steve’s life. Maybe he actually wants Steve to know he’s there, for whatever reason, maybe this is his way of getting in contact with someone he just barely remembers, and that makes Steve’s chest swell with hope. Maybe he was gauging Steve’s reaction deliberately, to see whether or not he’d be welcome near Steve, and Steve sure as hell hopes he hasn’t scared Bucky off if that’s the case. Maybe he’s exhausted, his physical condition not allowing him to remain efficient anymore. That thought makes Steve _hurt_. 

He hesitates, and he doesn’t call anyone. After all, it could just have been a tile slipping. 

(He knows it wasn’t.) 

He argues with himself for the next hour, berates himself and calls himself a foolish hope-blinded idiot, calls himself names for being so naive, and he knows, _he knows_ how stupid his actions are but he still makes up a flask of soup and wraps it up in a warm, dry, freshly washed blanket, the warmest one he owns, and leaves it out on his balcony table. He could never justify why he does it to anyone else, he knows it’s not justifiable, but he’s always been stupid when it comes to Bucky, from risking discovery by stroking his hand up Bucky’s inseam at the back of a darkened cinema when they were nineteen to going on a suicide mission to rescue him from Red Skull when they were twenty five to dropping his shield on the helicarrier when they were twenty seven and also ninety five. Bucky’s always just made him stupid. So he leaves out the soup and the blanket, even though it was probably nothing and there were a hundred other reasons the pigeons could have spooked.

 

 

 

And in the morning the flask is still there but the blanket is gone. 

A thief would not do that. An enemy agent would not do that. He doesn’t think he’s being stupid now when he thinks that there is only one person it could be.

Bucky came here, and he observed Steve, but he didn’t hurt him. Steve was sure that Bucky had remembered him, when Bucky paused and looked down at his face with something like horror in his eyes, and Bucky had saved him from the Potomac, he knows that, it couldn’t have been anyone else. So maybe...maybe it’s not too much to hope that Bucky remembers their past. Maybe it’s not just wishful thinking to imagine that Bucky’s watching over him, and not just to scope out the best way to kill him. It’s a tiny spark of hope within him that battles against the knowledge that Bucky’s been a tortured prisoner of war brainwashed into a career assassination for the last seventy years, his memory wiped clean and his hands splattered with blood, and there’s no proof that any of his friend is still left. 

That fucking horrible file.

He could call Sam with the information that he suspects Bucky’s location, or Natasha. He could tell Tony to narrow down his search to New York. But he doesn’t. Partly because he doesn’t have any actual proof yet that Bucky was here and can’t really justify why he’s so sure he’s right. But mostly because he doesn’t want to capture Bucky. He knows that there are people who probably want Bucky in a prison cell - the fragments of SHIELD or the government or the police or whoever. But Steve’s not going to help them any. His duty is to Bucky first and everybody else second. Unless he knows that Bucky’s hurting people now, with no orders from Hydra, he’s not going to report his existence to anyone. So he carries the knowledge and the hope within him and lets it warm him. He’s been devoid of all hope for so long, ever since he lost Bucky, he can’t help but to grab onto the first hint of possibility he has that he might get Bucky back again.

When he takes it inside, he sees that the flask is still full of soup, though the contents have long since cooled. Does that mean that Bucky doesn’t want to take food from him? Maybe it’s pride? Maybe he’s getting food from somewhere else?

 

 

 

The next night he leaves out his warmest hoodie and an insulated tub of pasta with sauce. The next morning, the hoodie’s gone but the food is still there. So, there’s a pattern here. 

 

 

 

The night after he leaves a toasted cheese sandwich wrapped in tinfoil in a box and a bottle of water, a scarf and hat and a drawing he did in the hospital. It’s of Bucky. Just his face, not his new long and messy hair. His mouth is drawn up in the smug lopsided little smile Steve always wanted to kiss off his face, but his eyes have all the lines around him that they never had in the 40s, the crows feet and stress lines that the man Steve knew before didn’t have, but the Winter Soldier does. That morning, the hat and scarf are gone, the water bottle’s empty, the sandwiches are gone and the drawing is neatly folded, placed inside the box that the sandwiches were in, presumably to stop the weather from damaging it. 

So Bucky ate the food that Steve left him, and he wanted to keep the picture he drew safe. So Bucky trusts him, or is hungry enough to take the food, and he values Steve’s artwork, like he did back in ‘38 when he told Steve, “You should save every one of the sketches you do. You’re gonna be famous one day, and all of those scraps of napkins are gonna be worth our apartment. Especially the ones of me, they’re gonna cost extra,” and Steve had tickled him ruthlessly until he shut up. Of course, Bucky turned out to be right, because the drawings of his they have in the Smithsonian probably do cost more than their ratty little apartment ever did. He’d sell all and any of them to get that place back, but that’s not how it works. 

He’s still touched that Bucky cares about his art. The knowledge glows inside him.

 

 

 

The drawing obviously changed something. Bucky always takes the food that Steve leaves for him after that. 

 

 

 

Somehow this becomes the new normal for Steve, over the next month. He makes sure that none of the missions last longer than a day, so that he can always be home every evening to leave food out for Bucky. He starts shopping for two again, reminding himself of Bucky’s old favourites. He buys bigger insulated containers that can fit enough food to feed a super-soldier’s metabolism, six packs of two litre water bottles. He leaves out a water-proof jacket, thermal socks, shoes in Bucky’s size, a first aid kit, tracksuit bottoms and t-shirts and, although he feels a little weird, underwear. He just wants to make sure that Bucky has everything he could need, and all of it gets taken. Bucky never leaves anything behind except the empty containers. 

Steve goes out often, and sometimes he still gets the feeling he’s being watched but he doesn’t know how much of that is wishful thinking. Not once does Bucky make himself visible or audible. So that means that he doesn’t want to talk to Steve, for whatever reason. Steve will respect that. He will not spy on Bucky in the nighttime while he eats. 

This is still so much better than after the fall. After the fall, Steve crashed a plane into the ice, listened to Peggy tell him goodbye, and didn’t care all that much that he was going to die, because he and Bucky had always told each other they’d be together for the rest of their lives, and Bucky’s life was over. This, now, knowing that Bucky is alive and there is a chance that he is himself, this life is better than any existence he’s had since Bucky fell. He no longer feels alone. He no longer feels lost. Granted, he is still the only one of his generation still alive and whole in this world, but as long as Bucky is alive they can work on the memory thing. It’s hard to be separated from him still, of course. It’s hard not to be able to talk to Bucky, or to hug him, or touch him. Of course it’s hard not to kiss him. But it’s ok. Steve can take a little more separation to give Bucky the privacy he deserves.

Well. It would be ok, if Steve’s comfort was all that was at stake. But the thing is, he doesn’t know if Bucky has somewhere safe to sleep. It’s possible that Bucky’s in an extremely vulnerable position right now - a lot of what was done to him was with the express intent to remove as much of his capacity for independent thought as possible. Maybe he’s forced to rely on Steve for food because he has no other way to feed himself. Maybe he’s out there somewhere, with no real idea of who he is, in danger. The streets weren’t kind when they were young, and though the city’s shining and new now and the Great Depression is over, it’s still not a safe place to be homeless, nowhere is. It’s also possible that Steve’s worrying over nothing and Bucky remembers enough to cope just fine in his home town, but in that case Steve needs to know it for sure. 

So, it’s not ok, but Steve will respect Bucky’s privacy anyway. Steve knows the alley-cats of New York well enough to know not to try to capture something feral. And Bucky never did respond well to pestering. 

 

 

 

The first time he sees Bucky, Steve barely catches a glimpse. It’s early morning, he’s stumbling across his living room to the coffee machine and wondering whether he’ll bother going over to Stark tower today, seeing as they just busted another facility the day before yesterday and Tony can’t have found another one so soon. He’s halfway through a yawn and vaguely scratching his belly when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye, out of the window to the balcony. He goes from half asleep to completely awake in an instant, turns to see a leg hitch up over the edge of the roof. He holds completely still, but he can’t hear the sound of anyone moving above him. Bucky must be able to move almost completely silently. It feels like fireworks through his chest, he’s so happy just to glimpse Bucky, it brightens his entire day. Even if it was accidental on Bucky’s part, probably. It makes him realise that this is real, this is really happening. It’s not just some grief-and-wishful-thinking-induced hallucination, his childhood friend really his back from the dead, and back here in New York with him. 

Naturally, now that he’s seen Bucky once, he’s desperate to see him again. He argues with himself back and forth all day, trying to balance Bucky’s privacy and freedom against his own desperate need to know that Bucky’s ok. On the one hand, Bucky has been held and brainwashed for seventy years, he hasn’t been able to make any decisions for himself, so it’s only right that he should be allowed to do so now. On the other hand, Bucky has been brainwashed for seventy years, and there is no way of knowing if he remembers how to clothe himself, keep himself clean, treat his own wounds, service his new mechanical arm. He could be out there hurting, and Steve might be able to stop it. Eventually, saving Bucky from the possibility of pain wins out against allowing him anonymity, and Steve hates himself a little for it, but it’s all he can do to choose the lesser of two evils. Tonight, he’ll stay up and watch out for Bucky, and try to assess whether he’s ok. He won’t go anywhere near Bucky, just try to see if there’s anything he obviously needs that Steve can provide. That is all he will do. He is very strict with himself about that.

So that night, Steve moves his duvet onto the couch in the living room. It’s small for his frame, and his head’s stuck at an awkward right angle because of the armrest, but he wasn’t planning on getting any sleep tonight anyway. He stares out of the window, watches the sky darken and the stars and streetlights start to shine, easily casting enough light on the balcony for his serum-enhanced twenty-twenty vision. He waits and watches for hours, until it starts to rain. It’s black sparking points of rain through black sky, and it looks like tears on the glass pane but it’s oddly calming. Drop after drop after drop, seemingly never-ending. He can hear the sound of it against the roof above him, and it’s claustrophobic in a strangely comforting sort of way, and for the hundredth time today, he thinks of Bucky, who probably doesn’t have a roof over his head to shelter him.

He’s staring right at the balcony when Bucky slides off the roof and down onto it.

Steve freezes for a moment, and can’t think.

The figure on the balcony is standing up from the crouch he landed in, and even though Steve could already see that it was Bucky from his stance, could recognise his silhouette backlit by the streetlights, now he can see Bucky’s face. His hair is dripping and stuck to his pale skin, and his eyes have dark shadows under them. The details are shadowy like graphite smudges, but Steve knows his face well enough to make that much out. He can see, too, that Bucky’s still wearing Steve’s hoodie, the first one he left out. His left hand is tucked into his pocket and Steve has a moment of irrational fear revolving around electronics and water, despite the fact that he knows Bucky was the one to pull him from the Potomac. Bucky’s whole body is trembling, and his lips are almost colourless, and Steve aches, to move, to open the door and let him into his warm apartment - but he has no way of predicting how Bucky would react, and he can’t scare him.

Bucky moves to inspect Steve’s offering left on his balcony table; an insulated box of risotto with disposable cutlery, and a second tub of semolina pudding, to see if Bucky still hates that as much as he used to. Bucky takes the food from the table and moves back into the corner of the balcony, where the jutting roof offers some protection from the rain. Steve can’t see him so well there, just the outline of his profile at an angle through the glass doors. Bucky hunkers down and eats the risotto, holding the container close to his chest to stop the water that’s dripping onto his shoes from reaching it. Steve can see that the shoes are the plain white trainers he bought for him, remembers they’re not waterproof and quietly curses himself for not getting boots. Bucky’s staring out across the street, where the streetlights’ yellow glow reflects in the wet pavements and the road. Steve knows that he wouldn’t be able to see much inside Steve’s apartment because of the light outside reflecting off his darkened windows, but he thinks maybe if Bucky looked he’d be able to make out Steve’s form, highlighted by his white duvet, on the couch. He stays still, and just watches Bucky, and feels like he’s living in a miracle, like this moment of time is a precious sacred gift. 

And then, when Bucky’s finished the risotto, he gets up and leaves the tub on the table, closed to stop the rainwater getting in, and takes the semolina back into his spot under the roof. And moments after his first bite, he leans forward and spits it out, off Steve’s patio onto the street. 

Steve can remember, a hundred times, “semolina is not even food,” “if semolina was sent as a trial of gratefulness from God then I’m going to hell,” “serving semolina is like asking a man to eat shit,” and as he watches Bucky spit twice more to get all of the taste and texture out of his mouth, wipe his lips on the back of his sleeves, and firmly stick the lid back onto the semolina tub, Steve cannot help but laugh out loud. He realises his mistake almost simultaneously, as Bucky’s torso snaps to face the window, and his gaze zeros in on Steve’s shape. He takes one step closer to the window and holds his hand, his right hand, up to the glass to shadow part of it enough that he can see in. Steve watches him squinting in at him for a second, makes eye contact and can’t think of anything he can do, so he just puts his hands up, palms outwards, in the universal gesture for “no harm”. Bucky still jerks back as if he’d seen a snake. He spins and climbs up onto the table, jumps and throws his torso onto the roof of Steve’s apartment, yanks himself forward and gets his foot up to help, and is completely gone from view in seconds. The whole thing was almost completely soundless from inside the apartment, and Bucky didn’t use his left arm even once.

 

 

 

Three days later it’s late evening and he’s come home after a day trip to DC to see Sam, who drops unsubtle hints that he definitely wouldn’t mind being an Avenger every other sentence, and Peggy, who is getting worse every day. He’s a little happy and a little kind of bone-deep sad. He’s sitting on the couch, and he was trying to read a book on all the art movements he's missed. He’s just thinking that it’s probably time to put Bucky’s food outside before he goes to bed when he’s distracted by movement in the corner of his eye, and when he looks up it’s Bucky. Bucky’s on his porch and he’s straightening up. He’s facing Steve and making eye contact. Steve, very, very slowly, puts the book on the table and stands. Bucky’s eyes track him warily, but he does not flinch. Steve swallows the shock and fear and sudden, searing hope, forces himself to focus. Bucky’s food is ready in it’s container on the sideboard in the kitchen. Steve fetches it, forces himself not to stare out of the window the entire time, because that would be creepy. He heads back out to the balcony, and he sees Bucky tense when he gets too close to him. He slows his pace but maintains eye contact until he’s right in front of Bucky, with only the glass doors between them. Bucky hasn’t taken a step back, which Steve guesses is because his exit is not behind him but directly over his head. His hair is messy and in his face, but his grey eyes are clearly visible. He’s wearing clothes Steve bought him. His mouth is a grim line. His body is tense, but he’s not running away. Steve wants to grin, wants to laugh, wants to hug him, welcome him inside, tell him how much he’s been missed - 

But Bucky wouldn’t welcome any of that right now. None of that is what he needs. Steve opens the glass doors. He doesn’t dare to step outside, because Bucky already looks like a horse about to bolt. He just proffers the tub of food, and Bucky reaches out and grabs it. Right hand, Steve notices. His gaze is darting around, over Steve’s shoulder and into his eyes and to the floor and to Steve’s still outstretched hand. Steve wants to catch his eye, smile, let him know he’s safe, but he’s so nervous right now that he doubts it would look like anything other than an anxious grimace. Bucky jerks a nod in an awkward motion of thanks, then backs up a half step. Steve copies him, and then Bucky’s turning, climbing onto the balcony table, tossing the tub of food ahead of him and he jumps and pulls and is up onto the roof and gone without kicking Steve in the head or flailing even a little. Steve thinks, dazedly, Bucky always was graceful, and then swallows down the bitter aftertaste of the thought because Bucky’s added stealth is a gift he never asked for. He closes the balcony doors, and sits back on the couch. He looks down at his book, and then laughs at nothing. He was sad, a little while ago, and he still is now, but he is also happy, and glad, and so hopeful. 

 

 

 

Steve was very heartened by the semolina incident. That, more than anything else, had convinced him that some of Bucky was still in there, somewhere. And it changed something about their dynamic too, he thinks, because spitting out the semolina means that Bucky isn’t taking whatever he’s given but picking through Steve’s offerings to him and taking only what he chooses. Which, hopefully, means he knows where else he can get what he needs. 

Bucky having the courage to meet him face to face and take the food out of his hands, standing directly in front of him for the first time in four years, that were really seventy, and looking him in the eyes with no mask and no black paint between them, the awkward motion of thanks - 

Steve is floating on clouds. When Natasha calls in on him unexpectedly the next day, as she is wont to do, she takes one look at him and asks him, jokingly, “So who did you lay last night?” 

Steve laughs it off, blushes unintentionally and then uses it to play the fool, the awkward bumbling virgin. He asks her about how she’s been, where she’s been, and she says only, “Fine, thank you,” and “Visiting some people”. She also sticks around while he cooks lasagne for himself and Bucky and he tells her, “It’s nice to have the time and facilities to do more than warm up MREs for a change.” 

“Smells amazing. Where’d you get the recipe?”

“I got it from the internet. Don’t tell Tony. He still thinks I don’t know what ‘googling’ means.”

Natasha laughs. She forces him to try a drink she brought over from one of the awful overpriced “atmospheric” coffee shops that surround his home, and he has to admit that actually, a cinnamon chai latte with a double pump of caramel and whipped cream on top is not bad at all.

Later, that evening, he goes back to the coffee shop and orders another, takes it home and pours it into a flask, and leaves it out with the lasagne. He’d looked for a while for a recipe that looked suitably close to the lasagne Bucky’s mother used to make, which then became a favourite in the Rogers household as well. He’d never asked her for the recipe. It had never really seemed important. He’d never really expected her to be gone. It’s been years since she passed and he still misses his mom.

That evening, he waits up with his heart in his throat, until the sky outside darkens past dusk. He’s just starting to doubt whether Bucky will come tonight, wondering whether to leave the food outside to make sure he gets it, when there’s a scrape-thump noise, and Bucky’s dropping onto the balcony. He’s still cautious, still wary, but his gaze isn’t flitting and skittering anymore. He’s tracking Steve instead. Steve hands over the coffee and is about to pass Bucky the tub of lasagne when Bucky hesitates, and he sees that Bucky’s reluctant to hold out his left hand to take it. He sees it clearer now, in the light spilling through from his apartment, and he can see that the metal is scuffed, dirty and scratched, and some of those scratches look like where the machinery has been jammed and the plates forced to scrape against each other, rather than from an external source. His eyes flick back to Bucky’s and Bucky is still watching him, warily, but the fear is gone. 

It’s a risk, he knows it might scare Bucky, but he thinks that it’ll probably be ok when he sets the tub down on the table instead and says, “You can eat it here. I can - I’ll go back inside.” 

Bucky’s flinch is carefully repressed, but it’s there nonetheless. His shoulders curl inward, defensive, and his body goes tense. Bucky doesn’t reply, only looks up at Steve with fear cobwebbing lines around his eyes. Steve only holds his gaze, says, “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, it’s ok.” 

The muscles of his body slowly unwind their tension and his eyes flick down to stare at the ground. But the fear lingers around his eyes and the set of his mouth. He holds Steve’s gaze for a moment, and then nods. 

Steve goes back into his apartment, leaving the door to balcony open, and Bucky puts down the flask on the table, opens the tub one handed, takes the cutlery Steve had left on top of it and digs in. Steve sits on his couch, angled so he’s not staring directly at Bucky, and picks up a book at random. He stares at it and does not read a single word. He hears the sounds of Bucky wolfing down his food. He always used to eat fast. They’ve always been hungry most of the time. He listens for the sounds of Bucky’s cutlery scraping the box, his breathing, the sound of him shifting to get comfortable in the hard wooden balcony chair, and his mind is singing praises and thank-yous to the universe that led Bucky back to him, even after both of them got so lost for so long. He’s not sure, but he thinks that he hears Bucky make a little appreciative grunt after Steve sees him take a sip of the cinnamon chai latte out of the corner of his eye. Steve can’t help but smile into the book he isn’t reading.

When Bucky’s finished eating, he clears his throat awkwardly, and Steve looks up from his book. Bucky nods in the same stilted motion of thanks as the last time. Steve smiles back to indicate ‘You’re welcome”. Bucky seems to hesitate, before picking up the empty coffee flask and gesturing to Steve with it, bobbing his head again, and the side of his mouth twitches in an almost half-smile. Steve laughs out loud, half delight, half surprise, and vows to get Bucky as much overpriced and sugary coffee as he can. Bucky’s half-smile lingers for a second longer before he turns and yanks himself up onto Steve’s roof and out of view.

Steve looks down, still with a smile on his face, to see that the book he was pretending to read was a cookbook and it’s upside-down in his hands.

 

 

 

All the next morning, Steve finds himself smiling at nothing. While he washes up the box, cutlery and flask Bucky ate with, whilst he goes for his morning jog, whilst he launders his clothes. He’s glad he hasn’t planned to meet up with any of his friends today, because he thinks they’d be able to tell there’s something up. He actually catches himself whistling as he’s cleaning his apartment. He recognises that he’s being ridiculous, but it only makes him smile wider. By afternoon however, he’s calmed down a little. Bucky’d seemed healthy, but there’s no doubt from the way he’s moving that his metal arm is hurting him. And although he’d looked well-fed to Steve, how can he be sure that’s the case? For all he knows, the only food Bucky gets is what he gives him. He’s been making enough of each meal to fill him up for maybe half a day, for a normal person, but what if Bucky’s metabolism is faster, like Steve’s? And Bucky got hurt pretty badly on the helicarrier, what if he needs extra calories to heal? What if the food Steve’s giving him is all he’s getting?

By evening, Steve’s come to a decision. He makes pasta with tomato sauce and pops down to the ridiculous hideous coffee shop to pick up a dark chocolate mocha with cream and sprinkles, because Bucky always used to save his allowance and later his wages to buy chocolate, and in the war he’d hoard his own chocolate rations and trade precious cigarettes for those of the other Commandos. Steve’s just finished pouring it into a flask when he sees Bucky dropping down onto the balcony from the kitchen. The sky’s not dark yet; he’s pleased that Bucky seems to trust him enough to come to him without the cover of night. 

He goes out to the balcony, and places the coffee flask onto the table before handing the box of pasta to Bucky, who takes it whilst looking up at Steve through the curtain of his hair, the shy half-smile playing on his lips again. Steve can’t help but beam back at him. Then he takes a step back, and takes a deep breath before he says, “Bucky.” 

Bucky tenses up, but not as much as last time, and there’s no repressed full-bodied flinch this time either.

“It’s nothing important. I just wondered if it’d be convenient for you if I started leaving some food in the morning, as well.” Carefully uses no imperatives, no command words at all. 

Bucky shrugs.

“Ok. Well, we’ll try it out for a while, see how it goes?”

Bucky nods and Steve decides to take that as a win. 

“Is there a time that’s best for you?”

Bucky shrugs again.

“About an hour after dawn then?”

Bucky nods. 

“Ok. Great.”

Steve leaves Bucky alone on the balcony and retreats back into his apartment. He doesn’t fist pump the air, but it’s a close thing. That was their first real conversation since the fall, and Bucky’s agreed to let Steve help him. Although admittedly, Bucky didn’t say anything himself. 

They made him wear a muzzle.

It’s ok. Bucky’s ok now. Steve will make him healthy, body first. He will do everything possible to help Bucky, and Bucky will heal until he can be happy again. There’s all the time in the world. They have the rest of their lives.

 

 

 

Steve gets up early and makes bacon, eggs and beans the next morning, enough for two, and hums to himself while he’s cooking. Sure enough, by an hour after dawn Bucky’s there on the balcony. Steve’s pleased to note that he’s wearing different clothes to the last time he saw him. 

Shit, he hadn’t thought of laundry. He’s pretty sure Bucky doesn’t have a home, and Bucky probably doesn’t have money to use a laundromat. Unless he steals it. Or unless he actually does have an apartment, though Steve’s pretty sure that’s not the case because of the way that Bucky’s stubble is ever-lengthening, and the only clothes that he wears are Steve’s. On the other hand he always seems to be clean. Really, there’s no way to know unless he asks Bucky, but Steve’s probably going to have to wait until Bucky’s no longer functionally mute.

Steve waits for him to get settled with his food before he says, “Bucky.”

This time Bucky doesn’t flinch when spoken to, and Steve chooses to take it as a sign of progress being made. 

“I hadn’t thought of it, but if you ever need me to wash some of the clothes I gave you, I’d be happy to do it.” 

Bucky’s eyes dart through the door to the inside of Steve’s apartment, wary.

“You don’t need to come in if you don’t want to,” Steve hastens to reassure. “You could just drop them off with me and then pick them up again later.”

Bucky pauses, then nods. 

“Ok then.”

Bucky goes back to his food. Steve goes back into his apartment and eats his own food at the kitchen table. By the time he’s finished eating, Bucky’s gone. The cutlery is neatly lined up on his plate. 

 

 

 

That evening, Bucky comes by for a roast Steve spent most of the day on - finding out the exact cooking times, techniques and preparing all the vegetables, meat and gravy from scratch, it turns out cooking is pretty fun when you can afford decent ingredients - and he brings a bundle of laundry with him. It’s tied together with sweater sleeves, and it gets thrown off Steve’s roof onto the balcony in front of Bucky, and then Bucky drops after it. Steve unknots it and puts it in the washing machine, then serves both of them. They eat together out on the balcony in silence, but the sounds of the city trickle around them and fill the empty spaces. Steve wishes that he could say something, could start a conversation and find out how Bucky’s doing, but Bucky doesn’t want to talk or be talked to. Steve can’t imagine what Bucky’s been through, not really, not even with the file, so he’ll do whatever he can to follow Bucky’s unspoken wishes. He should just concentrate on how glad he is that Bucky’s here with him, and safe, and more or less whole. Bucky isn’t ignoring him, during the meal, isn’t avoiding eye contact, and his movements are neither tense nor stilted. He seems comfortable enough in Steve’s extended presence. Given everything, Steve feels that’s got to be a pretty solid win. 

Bucky finishes his food before Steve, and sits still while he waits for Steve to finish, politely. The only part of him that moves is his right hand, fiddling with his left cuff. Steve can tell that he feels awkward, unsure, but he’s staying anyway. Steve can remember both of their Ma’s telling them, a hundred times, “don’t leave the table until the meal is over.” He hopes Bucky can remember that too, he hopes Bucky can remember his Ma. It’s too painful to even consider the alternative.

Once Steve’s finished, he stands to clear the table and Bucky stands too. He helps Steve stack their plates, and he’s gone by the time Steve comes back from rinsing them and putting them in the dishwasher. 

“Your clothes’ll be done by the morning!” he calls to the empty street, feeling like an idiot. 


	2. Chapter 2

Steve wakes up early again the next morning, but he can’t be bothered to hasten out of bed. He just lies there and watches the reflections of the sun rising in the windows across the street, watches the light pool on the ceiling and flow down the walls, watches the shadows sink through the carpet and out of the world and feels the warmth of his duvet around him and feels glad, because even though there’s a thousand reasons this shouldn’t be happening, Bucky and Steve are both alive, and together, and the war is over. 

The lie in means he doesn’t have as much time to get breakfast ready for Bucky, so he’s still cooking when he sees Bucky drop down to the balcony from the corner of his eye. 

“Hey,” he calls, and Bucky catches his eye, peering at where Steve stands in the kitchen through the living room between them. Steve can’t see his face well but he’s pretty sure the half-smile is back as Bucky waves, with his right hand. The sight of him, awkward and sweet and self-deprecating, makes Steve laugh aloud. He moves the frying pan off the heat, and jogs across the room to open the balcony door. 

“You can come in to wait, if you want,” a hopeful, undemanding invitation. 

A shadow passes over Bucky’s face, and he clears his throat. Steve thinks for a second he’s about to speak and his heart jumps into his mouth, but Bucky only looks down and shakes his head. 

“Oh, well, that’s fine, you don’t have to. It won’t be a minute now, I’ve only got the sausages left to fry.”

Bucky makes eye contact again, and he nods and smiles the little half-smile, so Steve is satisfied that he hasn’t upset Bucky. Steve is not hurt, he understands completely why Bucky doesn’t want to come in. He doesn’t want to feel enclosed, it’s understandable, it has nothing to do with not trusting Steve. Even if Steve would rather die than be responsible for trapping Bucky. 

He does not think of the file.

Steve finishes making breakfast while Bucky sits out in the sunshine to wait, and they eat together again. Steve notices that this time, Bucky doesn’t wolf his food down quite so fast, so they finish about the same time. He hopes it means that Bucky isn’t quite so hungry anymore. He hopes that Bucky knows he’s safe. He hopes that Bucky knows Steve would never hurt him. He wishes there was a way to prove it, a way he could say it that Bucky could be sure he means, but he guesses that, after what Bucky’s lived through, the only way that it’ll stick is if Steve proves it to him with his actions. And Steve is willing to do that, every day, forever, until Bucky understands. And then every day after that. 

Bucky helps him stack their plates again once they’ve both finished, and Steve says, “Hey, wait a second, I’ll get your laundry,” before he can move to leave. 

He fetches Bucky’s clothes, washed, dried, ironed and folded, from where he’d left them yesterday in a new waterproof rucksack by the balcony door. He hands it to Bucky, who slings the rucksack over his right shoulder and moves to do the same with his left. The movement makes a grimace of pain shoot across his face, and he winces. Bucky schools his expression terrifyingly fast, and is forcing his left arm back to reach the strap, even though Steve can tell through the tension in his frame that it’s costing him, and Steve yelps, “Stop! Hang on a second, I’ll fetch something better.” He dashes to his bedroom and rummages through his closet until he finds his messenger bag. On the balcony, he takes the rucksack back and transfers the clothes into the new bag whilst apologising, “I’m so sorry Buck, it didn’t occur to me - I didn’t mean for it to hurt you, you should tell me if something hurts. You should never have to hurt -”

His babbling is cut short when Bucky’s right hand comes to rest upon Steve’s shoulder. Steve is shocked and delighted at the contact. It’s novel familiarity sings through him. The first time his best friend and sometimes-lover has touched him without intention to hurt for...too damn long. His gaze shoots to Bucky’s face, and Bucky’s smiling the little half smile, and his eyebrows are raised. He’s amused. Well, at least if Steve looks like an idiot, Bucky’s finding it entertaining. 

 “Sorry. Ok. Just - just know that I mean it.”

Bucky’s smile deepens a little, and he nods, just slightly. 

“Ok.”

Bucky lets go of him, but Steve keeps the warm feeling the touch gave him because Bucky keeps smiling.

“See you later?” Steve asks, and Bucky nods before stepping up onto the table, and pulling himself up onto the roof. Now that he’s out here to see, Steve notes how much Bucky’s relying on his right arm to drag himself up, using the left one only enough to push himself onto the roof. It’s pretty flat, and there’s not much of a gap between Steve’s building and the ones next to it. Bucky can go anywhere, and does, for all Steve knows. Although he supposes Bucky must be staying near enough to him to visit twice a day now. Steve guesses that he hasn’t got a car, so that’s a radius of about fifteen miles, if he’s walking. Or more, if he uses public transport. 

Steve shakes himself, and tells himself not to think about it. It’s none of Steve’s business where Bucky goes if Bucky doesn’t want it to be. If Bucky wanted Steve to know, he’d tell him. Of course, the fact that Bucky hasn’t told him that or anything else, or even spoken a word in Steve’s presence this whole time is a concern.

 

 

 

That afternoon, Sam calls him up from DC. Sam says he doesn’t have time to chat because he’s got to go babysit his sister’s kids, but he wants them to meet up in the next week. Steve says yes, sure, of course, and they make a rough plan for the following Saturday. Steve starts brainstorming excuses as soon as he hangs up. 

He’s told work, or rather, Tony, that he wants more time off, which along with a recommendation from the therapist he was assigned in the weeks after being woken up, who he’s talked to maybe once or twice after the first mandatory assessment, seems to have done the trick. He’s not called in on long-distance or long-term missions anymore, which means that at the moment his job is mostly helping with strategising the missions the other Avengers and Stark’s ex-SHIELD personnel are working on. He goes uptown to train with the team at about once a week, which is usually pretty fun. He goes to volunteer at hospitals and youth outreach programs sometimes, takes evening art classes. Although the press sometimes picks it up, and tourists ask to take photos with him, being back in New York is great because, as a matter of pride, no one acknowledges that he’s Captain America 90% of the time. It’s given him a lot of time to brush up on his cooking and drawing. 

Natasha’s only visited once since Bucky’s been back, and she definitely noticed a difference in his behaviour, but luckily for him she’s been too busy recently to come over more often, which would inevitably end in her grilling him about it and figuring out the truth. He doesn’t know how she’d react to the information that he’s been socialising with the ex Winter Soldier and he doesn’t want to know. With Sam, there’s less likelihood of lethal force being involved in the consequences, but he’s no more eager to see how it would turn out. He’ll have to find some other reason to explain why he’s making twice as much food as he needs for dinner, is doing enough laundry for two people, and is constantly inexplicably cheerful. It doesn’t help that he’s pretty sure that most of his friends have taken his request for leave as a sign of fragile mental health, which no one has directly addressed but he has avoided denying. He’ll also have to find a way to get Sam to come over after he’s finished clearing up two sets of plates and cutlery for breakfast, and out of the apartment before Bucky comes over for dinner. 

Steve’s still making a list of possible excuses in his head that evening whilst he makes spaghetti bolognese for dinner. By the time he’s serving it up, the list is still distressingly short, and most of the excuses he’s come up with are outlandish and ridiculous. The frontrunner is telling Sam that he’s got a girlfriend, but he has no idea how to sell that. Saying he’s got a boyfriend might be more convincing, and he could use it to explain his secretiveness, but that would still cause more problems than it would solve. Sam would still demand to meed the person in question regardless, and the rest of the team would probably hear the news within hours, and Steve has no faith whatsoever in his ability to maintain the deception. 

Somehow, even though he’ll be eating dinner with Bucky in minutes, Steve misses him. Bucky always was a better liar than him, could give him tips on what to say, he’d be able to think of the best story. But Bucky doesn’t want to talk anymore.

He shakes off his morose nostalgia as he sees Bucky’s legs dangling over the edge of the roof. Steve takes the plates and cutlery all in one go, and has to gesture to Bucky to open the balcony doors. Bucky seems unsure, and then looks surprised when the doors open for him. Bucky hadn’t known that he’s always welcome. As Steve sets the plates down on the table, he says, “I keep those doors are open all the time, Bucky. You can come in whenever you want, day or night. Just in case you ever need anything.” 

Bucky’s brow furrows, but he doesn’t look sad or upset. He looks...pissed. Steve remembers the way Bucky always used to nag him about taking care of himself, wearing a scarf in cold weather and eating right and minding his six on a battlefield, not to mention fighting with a giant red white and blue target. He probably doesn’t approve of the flaw in Steve’s security.

“What? You need to be able to have somewhere to come if you ever need any help. If you prefer, I can give you the key?”

Bucky’s frown doesn’t lessen, but he nods. Steve goes and fetches his spare key from the rack by the door, and while he’s there, he grabs the one for his apartment and his apartment building too.

“Balcony door,” he says to Bucky, holding up the relevant key, “My front door, the building’s main door. You can come in whenever you want to. You’re welcome anytime you want.”

Bucky takes the keys stiffly, stuffs them into the pocket of the warm and sturdy hiking trousers Steve had bought him. He nods, as if in thanks, and his frown has finally abated. 

“Ok then. Now we’ve sorted that out.”

They sit at the table to eat, and Steve digs in. He’s three bites in and congratulating himself on his cooking abilities when he hears Bucky’s cutlery clatter and there’s tomato sauce across the table top. Bucky’s trying to eat the spaghetti with his fork, but without being able to hold the spoon in his damaged left hand, he’s just managing to twist all of the spaghetti on his plate into one giant swirl on the end of his fork which he cannot fit into his mouth. 

Steve is caught between berating himself for his oversight and laughing at Bucky’s oh-so-familiar frustrated pout. He tries to swallow his laugh, but he can’t help smiling as Bucky frowns at his food and tries to bite at some of the lengths of spaghetti trailing down from the fork he’s holding aloft. 

“Gosh, Bucky, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think,” Steve says, sincerely enough, but Bucky looks up and catches him smiling and the look he shoots at Steve is a patented Bucky Barnes _fuck you, sunshine_ glare. Steve can’t help but laugh out loud at that, because Bucky’s getting tomato sauce on his chin. 

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, before Bucky can make any move against him, and goes to get tissues from the kitchen. He’s managed to just about school his features into a bland expression by the time he gets back, but his attempts are pointless because Bucky is just sitting there, all attempts at eating abandoned, glaring at him. Steve cannot suppress a grin as he says, “Here,” offering the tissues. 

There’s a flicker of amusement in Bucky’s face, but his arms remain petulantly at his sides, and he turns his chin away, glaring at the wall behind Steve’s shoulder and stubbornly refusing the tissues. Steve can see he’s trying not to laugh now, too. Steve’s stomach swoops up into his throat, because this is Bucky making a joke.

“Come on, Buck. You can’t just make a mess and leave it.”

Bucky huffs and then takes the tissues and dabs morosely at his chin, then wipes the splashes of sauce on the table. 

“No, Buck, you’re…um. You missed a spot.” Steve points to his own cheek. One eyebrow raised witheringly, Bucky wipes at his cheek whilst managing to completely avoid the remaining sauce. “No, um, left. No, your left.” Bucky continues to miss spectacularly. “How about I just…”

Steve approaches Bucky slowly, but he doesn’t flinch away at all. Steve wipes the sauce away gently, just to the left of his lips, and Bucky’s gaze flicks back to his. There’s still mirth in his expression, but there’s something else too. Intent. Heat. Slowly, Steve takes the tissue away from Bucky’s skin. He wants to trace his fingers lightly, so slightly, over Bucky’s lips. It’s shallow, Steve knows, but he never could get over just how gorgeous Bucky is. The lines of his face are thinner now than when they were kids, leaner, his beauty more harsh than generous, but he is still _gorgeous_. He is still staring into Steve’s eyes.

Steve drags in a shuddering shaky breath and tries to think clearly. This isn’t something he should be doing. He tries to focus on something else, anything - he looks down at Bucky’s plate, and realises he still hasn’t solved the original problem that started this mess. He sighs, says, “Maybe I should have just stuck with tinned spaghetti hoops.”

There’s a huff from Bucky which could be soft laughter, agreement or exasperation, and, knowing him, is probably all three. 

Steve cuts up Bucky’s long strings of spaghetti, and then hands the cutlery back. He goes back to his side of the table, and tries to continue his meal. This time he doesn’t even get a chance to dig in before Bucky disrupts him. He’s trying to scoop up all of the shortened strings of spaghetti onto his spoon, but he seems to be encountering a great deal of difficulty at this relatively simple task. It’s hard to be certain of anything when your dining partner never speaks, but it’s pretty obvious Bucky’s creating a deliberate production. He’s clashing his cutlery against his bowl, failing to get even one spoonful of food into his mouth successfully and shooting truly piteous looks at Steve through his rough curtain of hair, which could no doubt melt a harder heart than Steve’s. However, Steve happens to know that that’s the exact puppy dog look Bucky’s been pulling since he was eight. 

“What is it then, Bucky?” He puts on a mocking tone. “Oh, poor me, my horrible friend won’t make food I can eat? I’ve obviously really inconvenienced you huh.”

Bucky blinks twice in a fashion which is about a micrometer away from batting his eyelashes.

“Well, I didn’t do it on purpose did I?” 

Bucky shrugs, the half-smile on his face, and Steve can’t help but laugh. Bucky’s adorable yet assholeish teasing is making Steve’s chest light up with joy. _God_ , he’d missed Bucky.

“What, do you want something else? I could put this on toast for you to eat?”

Bucky wrinkles his nose.

“Well I’m not cooking you another whole meal, I don’t care how much this one’s offended you.”

Bucky huffs a short sigh, and fiddles with his cutlery.

“Hell, Buck, what do you expect me to do, feed it to you?”

Bucky’s head cocks as soon as the words leave Steve’s mouth, and his mischievous look turns pensive. Before Steve can take back his words, Bucky nods once, decisively, as if that’s the problem solved.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake. You’re not serious!”

Bucky pointedly rubs at his obviously crippled left arm.

“Oh come on!”

Bucky sniffs pathetically. 

Steve has got absolutely no idea how Bucky is managing to pull shit like this with him as a fully grown adult man, _without even saying a word._

Steve takes one moment to be grateful for how much Bucky has remained himself, despite everything.

He sighs as if put-upon, goes around the table and takes Bucky’s cutlery from where he’s left them, spread haphazard across his plate. He puts together a spoonful of spaghetti with considerably less complications than Bucky, and goes to put the spoon into his hand. But Bucky’s hands are resting loose on his lap. And Bucky’s licking his lips, opening his mouth. 

The most prominent reaction in Steve’s head is immediate, and indecent. Steve’s eyes focus on Bucky’s lips the same way they have forever. There’s a reason why he can capture Bucky’s face in one minute of quick pencil-strokes, and it’s because it’s the shape that he’s had the most practice at drawing. But Bucky’s lips have always merited special attention. Always. The notebooks of his adolescence and adulthood are full of Bucky’s full lips. 

But. But, Bucky might not know what he’s offering. Bucky might not even know who he is. The others, Nat and Sam, they don’t think he understands what’s happened to Bucky in the last seven decades, even after he read the file, but he understands enough. He can understand that everything that’s printed isn’t everything that happened. He can understand that Bucky has probably forgotten what consent means. 

In the time it takes Steve to consider, Bucky’s grown impatient. He uses his right hand to guide the spoon Steve’s holding to his mouth, and eats the food. Steve takes his hand away, drops the spoon and tries to decide what he should be thinking. But then Bucky pulls Steve’s hand back to his mouth, and kisses it. Gently, and chastely, but with lips slightly parted.

Steve swallows the lump in his throat.

Steve wants to kiss Bucky, wants to take him inside and make love to him under warm soft blankets until all he can feel is pleasure, until he cries out Steve’s name, and then in the morning he wants to feed Bucky all of his favourite foods in the sunshine. He wants it so bad he can physically feel the pull of it in his chest. Instead, he says, “Bucky, you don’t have to do this.”

Bucky’s eyes are still hot and heavy, focused on Steve. He lifts his lips from Steve’s hand and then turns it over, kisses the palm. This time his lips part and Steve can feel Bucky’s hot breath against his skin, the slightest slickness on his lips.

“I’m not sure if we should do this, Buck.” That makes Bucky blink and take his mouth off Steve’s skin, and although the heat doesn’t leave his eyes it’s enough for Steve to be able to think a little clearer. 

“Perhaps we should wait a little, just until-” you’re talking, and I’m sure you can give verbal consent and mean it. “Until things have settled down a little.”

Bucky examines him closely, and then nods. He doesn’t look all that agreeable, though. He still looks pretty horny, actually. And angry. And beautiful. 

Steve swallows hard again. He gives Bucky back his cutlery, and this time, Bucky seems to have absolutely no trouble eating his cut-up food with one hand. Their meal is silent like always, but unlike every other meal they’ve shared in the past few months, this one is awkward. 

Once both of them are finished, Bucky rises from his seat and leaves without a gesture before Steve can say a thing. 

That night, once he’s finished cleaning up the mess from their meal, and tried, once again unsuccessfully, for a way to deal with the logistics of Sam’s visit, Steve lies in bed and thinks of Bucky. Of himself and Bucky. Of the way they used to be.

The thing is, they’ve always been friends, but they’ve only ever been lovers at times. When Bucky didn’t have a girlfriend, when Steve felt lonely, when Bucky wasn’t overworked and when Steve was healthy. When they were younger, Bucky also had to be at least a little drunk so that afterwards he’d have the plausible deniability of the alcohol, the smokescreen of it to shield their normal friendship from their something more. That faded with their adolescence, when they moved in together. There was no point in deception between the two of them when both of them knew exactly what was happening. When they both knew that this was it, for real and forever. Then it became only when no one else could see, only in the night time, only in their apartment. Steve can count on one hand the times that either of them referred to it out loud in the light of day, and at least a couple of those were just a reminder to buy more Vaseline or prophylactics, for the mess. Keeping it to the night time maybe made it seem like a dirty secret, something to be ashamed of, but it also kept it sacred and safe. It meant that they could keep doing what they did for the whole of the time they were friends, because if they didn’t talk about it, it wasn’t important. It was just a helping hand in the nighttime. Or a mouth. Or a fuck. But if it was between friends, it didn’t matter if Bucky was dating someone else, that they were both men. It wasn’t a sin. Not something that would make Steve’s Irish Catholic mother turn in her grave.

There were spillovers, of course. Not everything non-platonic could be hidden from the light of day. Bucky ran his mouth before, during and after sex, Bucky ran his mouth constantly. He started and persisted with joking about how Steve was like his little wife, was his very own punk, and his dirty talk often got a little more loving than dirty, when talked himself himself voiceless over Steve’s lips or eyes or hands or ass or tongue. Steve had always drawn Bucky more than anything else, and he sometimes had to stop himself from absentmindedly sketching Bucky’s naked body in one of the sketchbooks that he used for commissions or in public. But they weren’t a couple. Or they were, but they'd didn’t need to talk about it. Couples live together, sleep together, stay loyal to each other, and they did all of that. The things they couldn’t have, they didn’t really need. Couples gave flowers on Valentines day and wore rings. Bucky and Steve gave each other marks on collarbones and upper thighs, hidden from prying eyes, and Bucky had scars on his knuckles from fights he got into for Steve, and Steve’s knuckles had cuts to match. Couples said _I love you_ , but Bucky and Steve never really needed to state the obvious. Both of them already knew.

And both of them knew that there wasn’t a future for the pair of them outside their twenties, that you couldn’t stay living with your best friend forever, and that one or both of them would probably one day settle down with a dame. It wasn’t the worst thing, because both of them liked dames well enough, and because they’d always be able to stay friends. Still. Sometimes, on morose evenings when Bucky was out whirling through the dancehall of Brooklyn and he was at home alone in the cold, Steve thought of their futures rolling out in front of them; the day when Bucky would finally find a girl he liked as much as Steve, the day he’d marry her with Steve as his best man, the day he’d name Steve the godfather of his firstborn, the day when Steve would finally contract an illness his struggling lungs couldn’t overcome and Bucky and his beautiful family would bury him.

But then Bucky would come home after his dates, smelling of alcohol and women’s perfume, but _Steve’s_. It would be late at night and dark, and he might have lipstick smudged on his collar, but he’d never do anything more than kiss his date goodnight on her doorstep. He always came home.

Steve tried to feel blessed for what they did have, and not to be bitter that they couldn’t have more. He usually succeeded. If he never let himself imagine more, he couldn’t grieve over the unachievable impossibilities. They didn’t speak of it and it wasn’t permanent, but it was real. They could reaffirm their love in the form of friendship all the time. They didn’t need lover’s tiffs when they already had old irritations, which may as well have been the same as married couple’s arguments. 

And then the war happened, and then the serum. Everything changed. They could die tomorrow, but also that there was the faintest possibility that Steve might live a full life. Bucky was jealous of the way Steve looked at Peggy, at the way he fell for her in Bucky’s absence, but there was never any doubt in Steve’s mind that he and Bucky would remain together, whether he and Peggy did or not. After the war, if there was an after the war, Steve would talk with Peggy, who was kind and brave and strong and loyal, a knife-hard weapon of a woman whom he trusted with his life, and if she didn’t still want him combined with Bucky then she’d let them live in peace without spreading their secret. And if she did, they’d find a way to live together, find a way to love each other, all three of them. Peggy was the love of Steve’s life, and Bucky was his soul, and they would make it work. The three of them would be less suspicious than a couple of bachelors. They could buy neighbouring houses, with thicker walls than anything they could ever have afforded before. 

Because Steve had money now. Even if Peggy didn’t want to be with them, he and Bucky could buy privacy in remote houses, buy anonymity somewhere no one had ever heard of them. If rumours spread they could move to somewhere they hadn’t yet. Before 1942, Steve had never really left New York, but now if they could win the war they would be welcomed as heroes across half the globe. They could go anywhere, and be rich enough to do anything. 

The Commandos didn’t pry about what happened in the relative privacy of their own tent. They didn’t want to know. They didn’t care. Which was good, because when Steve found Bucky after Azzano **,** he realised that he was dumb, before, in Brooklyn, that he was so fucking dumb for thinking either of them could ever settle down with someone else, that he would ever not need Bucky as close as they could get, and the serum gave him a pretty goddamn overactive sex drive, and, well. At first, Bucky’d had a complicated reaction to Steve’s new body that mostly took the form of sulking. He told Steve that he was pissed off because his new body multiplied the number of ways he was able to get himself killed. But he’d pretty soon decided that he was a fan. Before, he used to talk about how Steve was so cute, such a perfect armful for Bucky, so easy to get exactly where he wanted, so delicate and pretty - all of which Steve knew perfectly well was a load of shit, because he was a rough, tough, badmouthed ball of elbows, knees and hard edges, but made him flush hot and embarrassed nonetheless. After, Bucky’d talk about how Steve’s new shoulders made his ass look even tinier, such a tight little hole for him to fuck into. Steve’s broad back was for bite marks and nail scratches, and his chest was for groping. He’d talk about Steve’s tits and hips and tiny waist like Steve was a pin-up girl. Steve’s dick hadn’t changed that much since the serum, but to hear Bucky talk, he’d doubled in both length and girth. He made Steve embarrassed, like he always had, and he could never quite decide whether Bucky really meant what he said in bed or if he was just using exaggeration to get the both of them off, but knowing what Bucky liked about him made it easier to see himself in a body that hadn’t yet felt like his own. Bucky kissed him in snow-laden woods in Nazi Germany like he was desperate, like he needed Steve to breathe. They stuck together like glue, and they held each other up. Neither of them would break apart with nightmares with the other wrapped around them as they slept. Steve knew that the two of them were fused together, after that, and they wouldn’t come apart again. 

And then Bucky died. 

And now they’re here and the world is different and Bucky’s alive but changed, and fuck, Steve still wants him. Bucky’s still as beautiful as he was when they were twenty, when they were smooth-faced and unlined, with puppy-fat still clinging round the edges. He’s still as beautiful as he was when he kissed Steve for the first time, or when took Steve’s virginity, or when they were tied-together-broken through the war.

But Bucky fell. And he may look the same, and Steve may need him the same way that he did before, but now isn’t then. It doesn’t matter that Steve’s been alone in a world he doesn’t know with no one he loves for four years. It doesn’t matter, because Bucky has been through hell. Steve has read the file. So whatever Bucky needs is the most important. They can’t fall into the same unspoken easy love they had, because now Bucky doesn’t speak at all. It’s not fair for Steve to take what Bucky feels obliged to give, and there is no way to know, now, what Bucky’s thinking when he comes onto Steve the way he did that evening, what his motivations and intentions really are, what his state of mind is like. And so, even though it might be hard for Steve, the only course of action he can take is to turn Bucky down, gently and respectfully, until he can be sure that Bucky’s in his right mind and can give real consent. 

That evening Steve lies in bed and thinks of Bucky, and Bucky with him, the way they used to be, and however noble his conclusions they don’t stop him from masturbating with the memory of Bucky’s red-stained lips in his mind. The time when Bucky tried on lipstick for Steve, the slow-spreading dirty smirk, his kisses, the stains he left, his bites, the sucking hickies and the way Bucky’s lips looked stretched around Steve’s cock-

 Steve comes hard, and doesn’t bother to make himself feel too guilty about it. He’s only human, after all.

Then he thinks about Bucky’s left arm, hanging useless at his side, no use to him if he’s attacked. The police and the remnants of Hydra and SHIELD have been completely unsuccessful in tracking him down so far, but if they come for him, he deserves to be able to defend himself, and evade capture. There is no way Bucky should ever be put into a prison cell again, no matter what people think he’s done. Or he could be mugged or attacked - though admittedly, the average New York mugger would be biting off more than they could chew attacking the Winter Solider, one-armed or not. The arm doesn’t seem to be causing Bucky pain, but there’s no guarantee that he’d let Steve know if it was. So Steve needs to help him fix it. 

The schematics for Bucky’s arm weren’t in the folder Natasha gave him, and they haven’t yet appeared on the internet information dump - although some of that data is so heavily encrypted it may yet be uncovered there. Tony and Natasha are the two people Steve knows who are most likely to be able to find that information, and also two people he is not willing to tell about Bucky’s return, because both of them are paranoid to the extent that he’s sure that they’d deem well-meaning but ultimately disastrous intervention necessary. The only other alternatives are removing it or building a new one. And the only person Steve can think of who’d have a good enough grasp of both biology and the mechanics of Bucky’s left arm to remove it or replace it safely without hurting him is, again, Tony. Steve is sure, from Bucky’s current behaviour and from the details of the medical experimentation described in the file, that there may be fatal results for whoever tried to put a needle anywhere near Bucky’s skin. It would be a serious favour he’d be asking of Tony. 

If he has to, since the whole Insight debacle, Steve could probably contact Tony, ask him for help and simply hope that Steve’s pleading and whatever vestiges of common sense Tony possesses will be enough to stop him trying to imprison or constrain Bucky. Steve isn’t sure of the likelihood of that eventuality. He’s not optimistic. 

Steve decides to mentally table the issue until Bucky’s in more of a shape to discuss the matter with him, and give his own input. And until Steve can figure out a way to reassure Bucky that it’d be completely safe for him to allow himself to be sedated.

 

 

 

Saturday rolls around, and due almost solely to a complete lack of better ideas, Steve tells Sam about how he’s been feeding Bucky for...it’s been months now.

Sam says he has to stop. Because Bucky should be taken in by SHIELD, or whatever’s left of it, should be assessed for potential health threats, have a full psyche evaluation and therapy from people who actually know what they’re doing. But Steve doesn’t want that. He thinks he has enough reason not to trust SHIELD or it’s shattered remnants, what with everything he’s been through. He doesn’t want Bucky to be lost to a bureaucratic, uncaring system, swallowed up into procedures and protocols where he’ll never see him again. Never touch him again.

He also hears what Sam’s not saying, that Bucky is a dangerous fugitive, an unstable unknown quantity with murderous capabilities, a predator who’s only instinct is to hunt. He doesn’t say it, but it’s clear in his tone. And that’s true, Steve knows it is, but he does his best to explain. That Bucky is shy and scared, trusting and skittish. That when threatened, his first instinct is to run, not to attack. That if he’s a wild animal, then he’s one that’s been kept in captivity too long, terrified of people. That his left arm and best weapon hangs useless at his side.

Once Steve manages to explain some of that, Sam says, “Hmm, well, ok then.” Skeptically. Steve mentions that Bucky doesn’t talk, so they rely on non-verbal communication, and Sam says, “You know there are so many ways this could go wrong. A miscommunication or a misunderstanding or something, when you’re the only person he knows, what with everything he’s been through…”

“I know. I’m not going to get it wrong.”

“Steve, there may not be a right way-”

“There is. I know him. Trust me on this, Sam, please. He’s my best friend, I know him better than anyone. Despite all of it, he’s still himself.”

(Steve does not try to explain how Bucky fumbled his cutlery to get Steve to feed him, how he kissed Steve’s palms, so tenderly. Lovingly. With a thoroughly knowing look in his eye)

“It’s not ideal, but I can make this work. He knows me. He trusts me. And I am going to do everything I can to earn and keep that trust. I’m going to take it slow, and be careful, about every single thing I do. And if I do something wrong, I will call you, and you’ll box my ears, and we’ll fix it.”

Sam rubs his hands over his face, blows out a huff of a sigh, and stares out of the window for ten silent seconds before he says, “Not ideal. Ok. You know, I would feel a little better about this if you’d told me right away, rather than weeksafter the fact.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just…It was hard to believe it was real at first. When I thought someone was following me, I wasn’t sure whether I was going to be calling for backup. Then when I realised that it was him, that he was here, I just. I was so happy. And kind of a mess about it. I didn’t know what to say to you about it.”

“Uh, I don’t know, ‘hey, Sam, you know that guy who threw you off a building, well, I’ve been having him round to dinner and doing his laundry this past little while, on account of he’s an old pal, and what’s a little attempted murder between friends?”

“Yeah, that. I didn’t think that’d go over well.”

“Oh, you didn’t, did you?”

“Sorry.”

Sam cracks a smile at Steve’s best getting-a-hiding face, perfected under the scrutiny of mothers, schoolteachers and Colonel Phillips.

“Ok. I know sharing isn’t exactly your first instinct. Just, keep me posted on this now, ok? It’s important that you talk about this. I don’t think a person could be more vulnerable than he is right now. Just don’t try to handle this alone. There is no way that ends well.”

Steve says, “I will. And hey, thank you for, you know. Being with me on this one. For everything.”

And Sam says, “No problem. Just let me know how I can help.” and they move on to talk about Steve’s work, how most gossip magazines have stopped bothering to report on his comings and goings now that it’s blatantly obvious that he really only ever goes to the Avengers tower, the community centre and the local grocers. Apparently he’s too boring to justify any stalking whatsoever. Sam complains about sports, and talks about how, gratifyingly, his newfound celebrity and association with the Avengers has brought more money and attention to the V&A centre than ever, and also an encouraging uptick in new veterans signing up to the centre. 

Once again, Sam not-so-subtly hints that he actually would not mind being an avenger at all, not that he’s thought about it, or even considered it, really, he just has this intuition it could be for him. The flying around and saving people and wearing a costume and meeting Tony Stark and Thor and spending more time with Natasha, like, he hasn’t thought about it, but if he had, he would have come to the conclusion that that would be awesome.

Sam can sense, now, the repeated nagging is wearing Steve down, and that it won’t be long now until he gets his way. Steve has no real reason to say no to him, after all. Of course, he’s not eager to let yet another one of his friends place themselves in the path of danger when they don’t have to. It would be nice if he could save one good person from getting mixed up in the whirling shit-storm that his life turns into given half the opportunity. To be sure that at least one person he knows is safe, the next time Steve’s world gets turned upside down and hundreds of people die. Just one person he doesn’t have to worry about. He’s lost almost everybody else. He’s lost everyone he ever knew. Just one person, even though he knows that Sam is a soldier, and he knows what he’s getting himself into, and he is an adult who can make his own decisions, and he wants to help save lives, and he would definitely be a great addition to the team. It would just be nice. There is no real reason to say no.

So this time, instead of humming and blandly agreeing that yes, Sam, that does sound nice, this time he says, “Come with me on Monday when I go in, we can talk to Tony.”

And Sam gets this gigantic grin on his face like Steve personally invented Christmas, and says, “Wow, that would be incredible, I’d love to,” instead of “finally”. And then he starts explain to Steve how he wants his suit to look, not that he’s really thought about it before _but_ , and Steve listens. 

Later, Steve mentions that it’s time he started cooking, and Sam hangs around his kitchen drinking beer whilst he makes enough shepard's pie for two super soldier sized appetites. He asks practical questions about the sort of thing Steve’s leaving out for Bucky; warm clothes and hot drinks as the weather gets steadily colder. And he thinks of something Steve hadn’t; high energy high fibre protein bars for Bucky, to tide him over between meals. “It’s not like you could really give the guy too much food,” Sam says, and Steve agrees. Sam clears out before Steve gets to the stage of serving up the pie. He looks wistfully at the balcony door. Steve notices him, and he says, “Well, it’d be nice to meet him, y’know? Sergeant Barnes was always kinda cooler than Captain America. He was the best shot, and he always had all the best lines, in the comic books. He got _all_ the witty one liners.”

For the first time, Steve thinks that maybe there was one thing they got right, at least. Except, “But didn’t they make him basically a kid? A teenager, in a warzone. A child soldier.”

Sam shrugs and says, “Details. Well, maybe I’ll meet him next time. See ya on Monday, Steve,” Sam says, and takes his leave. 

Steve uses the empty space Sam leaves in the apartment to consider why he hadn’t told Sam everything, why he hadn’t mentioned the way that he and Bucky have always been friends and more to each other. It’s partly habit, left over from the days of being careful to never let anyone know ever. This has always been just theirs. It’s also because he doesn’t have the words to describe it. The way it felt to be in love, but to learn to be content to act in a completely platonic way. The way it felt to be in love with your best friend, who knew your worst, darkest and weakest moments, who nursed you when you were sick and held you when you were crying and took all of your rage and said, I know. It’s ok. I understand. Bucky has always been - 

Twisted smile, flash of teeth, red lips, I-know-something-you-don’t smirk. Swagger that says, want me, want to be me. Dumb jokes, probably at his own expense, possibly about someone else's mother. Sweat soaked well defined muscles, sometimes allowed to touch, sometimes not. A clap to the shoulder on the street that’d equate to a kiss in their apartment. Towering taller, but never, ever a threat, not to Steve. When he’s angry he’s terrifying, because it happens so rarely, but he’ll punch the wall before he punches Steve, no matter what shit Steve comes out with. Later, Steve will wrap his bleeding knuckles. The smell of cheap booze, cheap cigarettes, cheap aftershave and cheap perfume - how does he wear it like a hundred dollar bottle of cologne? He’ll spend ten minutes slicking his hair up neat and he’ll dance for hours until it’s messy, and he looks fucking mouth-watering either fucking way. He will not turn away when Steve’s rage shows it’s ugly rearing head until he’s almost foaming at the mouth with a sense of injustice, not when Steve is pathetic and beaten down into the dirt, sniffling and still shaking with rage, not when Steve is so ill he’ll vomit anything in his stomach, not when Steve lost his mother and snapped at anyone who spoke to him for five weeks. Bucky loved to smoke but he quit when they moved in together because of how the smoke made Steve cough. Bucky has a heart of gold, a mouth of sass and kisses, kind, dangerous hands and clear, smart, blue sniper’s eyes. 

Steve doesn’t know how to say it in a way that’d make sense to Sam without splitting his heart open and spilling all the contents, so he doesn’t say anything. 

 

 

 

Saturday evening, and Steve finishes the shepard’s pie. It’s getting darker sooner now, and Steve honestly isn’t mad about eating outside in the cold and dark when there is a perfectly good table in his kitchen. If Bucky is too nervous to come inside with him just yet, he isn’t going to try to persuade him to do something he doesn’t want to do. So they eat outside in the damp grey drizzle, in total silence, and Bucky is still tangibly sulking. He treats his cutlery roughly, letting it bang on the edge of his plate, doesn’t make eye contact, jerks his feet away from Steve’s when they meet under the table. Steve thinks that, on the one hand, it’s not good that Bucky’s angry with him, but if he’s acting pissy, that’s a pretty good sign he’s acting of his own accord and not following any Hydra type behavioural patterns. The weather only clears a little in time for the sunset, which is faintly pink, like the inside of a shell. Bucky yanks himself up and over Steve’s roof without so much as moving his left hand.

 

 

 

On Sunday, Steve is humming along to the radio and writing up a summary of an enemy base’s tactical weaknesses and vulnerabilities when he almost has to kick himself. Liquorice. Disgusting, repulsive, horrible, dark, black liquorice. Bucky’s favourite. Bucky loved chocolate too, but liquorice was always best. It had always been harder to get in the war, and he would crow with joy whenever they found a town with a store which still had some in stock. Steve goes out to the grocery store ten minutes later. 

That evening, Bucky is no longer sulking as ostensibly, but he still isn’t making eye contact. When they’ve both finished their meal, Steve says, “Would you like some desert?”

Bucky cocks his head, questioningly, politely interested.

Steve goes inside and fetches the paper bag he’d filled with five dollar’s worth of liquorice, as well as three bars of chocolate. 

Bucky takes the bag, and when he sees it’s contents, he takes a deep breath, then looks up at Steve with the half-smile on his face which means that Steve is, probably, at least partially forgiven. 

Bucky takes one of the foul black strings and crushes the whole thing into his mouth at once. His eyes roll back a little and he makes a sound not far off a whimper. To Steve, it’s unintentionally and immediately pornographic. Despite the fact that liquorice does not count as a foodstuff. Bucky’s face, like that, like he’s so happy - the smile is almost full, now, and Steve put it there. Something Steve did made Bucky that happy.

“I’m glad you like it. I also got chocolate…”

Bucky finds one of the bars in the bag, and rips the wrapper off it with his teeth. He bites down. He sits with his eyes closed - in Steve’s presence - for a full ten seconds, and when he opens them, he grins, wide and kind of gross with chocolate on his teeth. It’s the most beautiful thing Steve has ever seen. 

 

 

 

Every single morning and evening after that, Steve gives Bucky liquorice and/or  chocolate and/or some suitably sugary drink. He also starts making them coffee with their breakfast, which probably has no effect on either of them other than the placebo, but at this point, he’s willing to take it. The stuff he’d been getting from the fancy coffee shops on his street had inspired him to get one of the more expensive blends from the supermarket, rather than the one he’d originally opted for, that tasted just about the same as the stuff that was available in the war. He eventually caves and buys all the ingredients to make disgustingly sweet coffee combinations himself. An automatic coffee machine, expensive peruvian coffee, real chocolate flakes for mochas, whipped cream, cocoa powder and an assortment of flavoured syrups. Orange and mint go down well, but almond gets a slight downward twitch of the mouth, that has Steve sighing, “Brat,” affectionately, in the same breath as, “Ok, no more almond then”. To be fair, it is not as much of a burden as he pretends, as, naturally, each confection must be tested before offered to Bucky, so, naturally, there is always more than enough for Steve too. He still likes to tease Bucky about how spoiled he is, the usual reaction being smug confirmation. On Tuesday, Steve remembers another common victim of Bucky’s sweet tooth, and offers him a tangerine after his breakfast. Bucky seems to find excessive entertainment in both the peeling apart and the eating of the tangerine, despite only being able to hold it stiffly with his left hand. Predictably, he gets juice all over his hands, and licks it off both. Steve wonders what orange juice and metal tastes like, and has to stop that train of thought after he’s hit over the head with the accompanying mental image of kissing Bucky’s hand in return. After that, Steve offers apples, bananas, pears and strawberries as well, because despite the fact that it’s November there’s still fruit grown abroad in all of the supermarkets. Bananas do not go down well, which Steve thinks is perfectly understandable, because these things they have now hardly count as bananas at all, but Bucky is a fan of everything else. Steve tries to find other snacks for Bucky too, but Bucky only likes dark, rich chocolate, and the overly sweetened modern snacks mostly get a slightly wrinkled nose, and the remainder of the bars left inside their wrappers for Steve to throw away when Bucky leaves. Sam’s energy bars meet the same fate. It becomes a bit of a challenge for Steve, to find what sweets Bucky will eat. He doesn’t mind when his offerings get rejected; he’s just glad that Bucky knows he has total choice over to refuse anything he doesn’t want.

 

 

 

On Friday, he presents Bucky with chocolate cake after dinner, and earns another full grin, like the first time Steve got him something sweet. Steve makes sure they have chocolate cake at least once a week, after that. 

 

 

 

On Wednesday, it’s the coldest night of the year so far. It’s also dark with cloud outside, and the wind is strong, blowing gusts of rain against Steve’s windows, and he is not relishing the idea of eating out tonight at all. When Bucky arrives with the slam-thud that Steve has become accustomed to hearing now that Bucky has completely stopped bothering to be stealthy, wrapped up in the rain jacket Steve gave him with the hood up, Steve braces himself before opening the door to the balcony. He’s greeted with a sheet of freezing rain blown straight into his face. The wind is blowing in exactly the wrong direction, so that the building does not provide any shelter to the balcony at all. Steve doesn’t want to make Bucky feel unsafe or uncomfortable, but he has to at least try. 

“Bucky,” he starts, hesitantly, “Would you like to eat inside, tonight?”

Bucky looks past Steve, to the inside of his apartment, the warm and the light of the kitchen table. Then he makes eye contact with Steve. His nod is slow, and hesitant. 

Steve takes a step back, and Bucky comes forward. In the months they’ve been doing this, Bucky hasn’t been at all shy of touch, hands brushing Steve’s on the tabletop and feet underneath it casually, but he keeps his distance now. His body is tense, and his eyes are sweeping the room, lingering on the doors and windows. His right hand twitches towards his back waistband, where Steve expects he’s concealing a weapon. He isn’t going to bother about it. If it makes Bucky feel safe, it’s ok by him.

“It’s alright, Buck, you don’t need to be worried. I’m not going to do anything. I’m not going to hurt you. No one else is here, no one else is coming.”

Bucky’s eyes flick to his face again, assessing, and Steve is quietly pleased that Bucky still knows him well enough to be sure that he’s not lying. His hand drifts away from his waistband once again. 

“You can check the rest of the apartment, if you’d like? I can stay here.”

Bucky nods, before moving off into the short corridor leading to Steve’s bedroom, the spare room, his study, bathroom and utility room. His apartment’s pretty small, only those five rooms along with the shared kitchen and living room area, so it doesn’t take Bucky very long before he’s back in the living room, facing Steve once again. Steve waits to see another terse nod before he closes the door to the balcony. The tension that went out of Bucky’s body when he seemed to believe Steve telling him that he was safe is back the second that the latch clicks into place. 

“You can leave at any time you want, Bucky, I’m not going to stop you.”

Bucky visibly tries to relax again, but can’t quite seem to do it. 

Steve deliberately turns his back, making himself vulnerable, whilst he goes and fetches today’s dinner, a pasta bake, from the stove, and sets the table with the knives and forks he’d prepared to take outside, wrapped in napkins. He’d had bottled water ready to bring outside for Bucky to drink with his meal, but as they’re inside he just pours both of them a glass from the tap. By the time he’s finished, Bucky’s made his way over to the kitchen table, and he sits at the same time as Steve. They eat in companionable silence, although Steve hears Bucky’s little noise of pleasure as he bites into the food, and makes a mental to prepare this meal again for them. This evening’s desert is baked pears with chocolate sauce, and Steve’s pretty sure that Bucky adores it, if his face is anything to go by, so he decides that today is, overall, a fantastic win. 

But then, at the end of it, Bucky zips his jacket back up, does up his hood, and goes back out into the freezing, soaking night, alone. Leaves Steve alone. 

 

 

 

The thing is - 

He’s fine, really. This is more than he could have ever dared ask for. His blessings have been huge and many. They both survived the war, they found each other again in the future, and Bucky knows him well enough to feel safe around him. This, for a scrawny, weak-lunged bloody-fisted queer guy from Brooklyn, should be more than enough. He should be happy enough with this.

But the thing is, he had lost everyone. Everything. Every piece of property he ever owned, every person he’d ever shared any of his past with. He even lost the body he lived in back then. It had been hard, at first. To feel like he has a place here, to feel like his survival was a good thing, when he was so alone. Sometimes it’s still hard, even though he has friends now, in Sam and Natasha, and even in Tony, Clint, Bruce and Thor. And Bucky, of course Bucky. 

Except not Bucky. Not the friend he used to know. This man is new. He’s also not the Winter Soldier, there’s no doubt about that. This man is polite, and he flirts, and jokes, and loves chocolate, complains and whinges; he’s overdramatic and protective and he trusts Steve. But he is not the same man. He may remember or not. He does not even speak to Steve. 

All those conversations. God, Steve hates himself now for failing to remember every single one of those conversations. Every day at school, home, work, war, morning and evening and sometimes through the night all the time they knew each other. All of Bucky’s words he has forgotten - he should have hoarded them, like he hoarded Bucky’s face and form in his sketchbook. He should have found a way to record every single moment they spent together. Because they are all lost now. They are gone from Bucky’s mind. All of that time. Years. Bucky has lost _years_. All of those love-filled years, and it’ll spill down the cracks of memory for both of them.

There is a new man in Bucky’s body now, and Steve will learn him and love him again, he knows he will, but sometimes he cannot help but grieve for the person opposite him, sitting and eating, in silence. 

He hates Hydra a thousand fold, for the wars they’ve started, for the lives they’ve ended, for the corruption they’ve planted, for the wealth they’ve leached, for what they did to Peggy’s SHIELD, and he hates them, he hates them, he hates them for what they’ve done to his best friend. For turning a person into a ghost. No one has ever done anything to deserve what was done to him, murderers and rapists do not deserve what was done to him, and Bucky was the sweetest kid anyone ever knew, he was the best man in the US army.

But he has survived, and Steve will learn him and love him once again, just like the first time.

He’s fine, really.

 

 

 

It’s morning, and Steve is awake, because his body clock is still operating on US military time tables, but it is winter and still cold and dark outside, and he does not want to move, at all. But Bucky will be coming over soon, and Steve’s been working on his omelettes recently, so now it only takes him about ten minutes to make a perfect specimen. He forces himself out of bed with thoughts of caffeine and sweet, sweet sugar, goes to the kitchen without turning any lights on because photons are the enemy of his barely-woken eyes and sets the coffee machine running before he does anything else. Once he’s done that and the smell of coffee begins to permeate the room, he turns and faces the kitchen, still rubbing sleep out of the corners of his eyes. It’s only then that he notices Bucky out on the balcony. He’s bundled up in what looks like two layers of sweaters as well as his raincoat, and also both the snood and the scarf Steve got him. He’s curled up in a ball, and hasn’t noticed Steve’s up.

Steve goes to the balcony door to open it, and Bucky only looks up when he’s half-way across the living room. He’s squinting and blinking and if Steve didn’t know Bucky’s paranoia better, he would guess Bucky’d been asleep out there. 

“Buck, if it’s too cold and you want to come in, you should just open the door. That’s why I gave you the key, ok? God, you must be freezing, get in here.” Bucky goes, gladly, as far as Steve can tell, so he doesn’t feel too bad about accidentally giving an order, when he realises he’s done it. 

Bucky props himself up on the kitchen counter that borders the living room, head resting on his right arm and eyes barely open. He always was terrible about getting out of bed in the morning in winter. More than once he’s made them late for church with his lie-ins. Bucky’d joke about how his work probably thought that Steve was an actual invalid, the number of times Bucky gave Steve’s illness as an excuse for being late. Jokes which Steve would not laugh at because he was pretty sure it was very morally scrupulous and dishonest. 

And whenever he got the opportunity, Bucky’d drag Steve back under the covers with him, if Steve tried to get up and be an active member of society. Fold his limbs around him, envelop him in warmth. Sometimes, they’d fall into sleep together. Mostly, they’d wind up fucking, gentle and slow in the bubble of warmth underneath the blankets, Bucky hissing and complaining like an old man about the draft anytime their movements nudged the covers off them and let the cold air in. He wouldn’t let either of them move until their mess had started to dry between them, and get uncomfortable, and even then he’d only allow Steve out of bed to clean up the mess - Bucky himself would only turn over and go back to sleep.

Steve passes him the coffee as soon as it’s done, and minds the omelettes. He tries not to say anything, but, “I guess this time of year is still hard for you then, huh?”

Bucky opens one eye. “You’ve always been completely awful at getting up in the morning when it’s dark. Nice to know somethings never change. Some Winter Soldier you are.”

Bucky lets out out a surprised bark of laughter. Not a little huff of breath, not just one of his half-smiles, a real, proper laugh. It sounds a little weird, sure, quiet and broken in the still morning air of the kitchen, but Steve will damn well take it. Bucky still looks slightly surprised, at himself now, as if he’d forgotten he could still make that sound, but he’s still smiling. Steve grins and dishes up their omelettes. 

 

 

 

Steve starts getting up earlier to let Bucky in as soon as possible. He reminds Bucky, gently and constantly, that if he wants to, he’s completely allowed to just open the door to let himself in, or sleep inside. Bucky always politely declines with a shake of his head. Steve assumes that means he’s got somewhere better to sleep - wherever it is he showers, maybe, wherever Bucky spends his time when he’s not at Steve’s apartment. He hopes that’s what it means.


	3. Chapter 3

Steve doesn’t expect it at all. There is no way for him to anticipate it, the day his world changes. He feels, looking back, like there should have been signs in the sky or something. And afterwards, fireworks, dancing in the streets like the photos he’s seen of V-day - something, anything, to mark what happened. But it’s just a perfectly ordinary morning like any other, except that after breakfast, when he’s clearing away the dishes, he feels Bucky standing behind him at the sink, when he normally leaves straight after the meal is done. Bucky just stands there, not making eye contact, looking down. He’s staring at his feet. Shuffling, a little. Then he swallows, takes a breath, looks up, and says, “Steve.”

Steve can’t breathe.

Bucky says, “Thank you. For everything.”

He darts forward and places a chaste, brief kiss on Steve’s startled parted lips.

Then he turns and leaves.

Steve spends the next three hours grinning like a loon at absolutely nothing.

He spends another three hours intermittently texting Sam that Bucky spoke to him, spoke real words, to him, saying thank you, and Sam is optimistic and supportive but warns him not to expect too much. He also draws Bucky again. Not just the doodles he does all the time, but a proper drawing of him how is now, grinning with the full, happy grin that is still rare but growing more common, with all the added lines, with his hair up in the scruffy bun he seems to favour.

It’s always been a silly little habit of his, drawing Bucky all the time like this. But he heard someone say once that a person’s image holds a little piece of their soul, and he wants to keep, record and treasure every little piece of Bucky’s light that he can, and keep them safe. Keep every tiny scrap of him safe. Steve always knew, when he was younger, that he had no hope of holding onto Bucky forever - although back then, he wasn’t thinking of the war, but of pretty girls, better friends, a wife and children and a life in a richer part of the city. Bucky always had been smart at school, got promoted from his job fixing cars to managing the garage within a year of working there, whereas Steve, with his nonexistent strength, chronic illness and bad attitude, thought probably he would not ever leave Brooklyn.

That was a long time ago. Now, he’s lost Bucky enough times to know that he can’t live without him, and he has lost everyone he ever knew, and Bucky has lost himself. Now, drawing Bucky and keeping him safe and learning the shape of him as he is now and loving him are more important than they ever were before. Now, his possessiveness of Bucky has claws.

He spends an awful half an hour near lunchtime worrying over whether or not Bucky’s words could possibly be construed as a goodbye, and then forces himself to stop. Or, rather, he texts Sam about it, and Sam tells him exactly how ridiculous he is being, and then he stops. If Bucky meant goodbye, he would have said goodbye.

The rest of the day, Steve has to shop, and fill in SHIELD paperwork, and he has some of his Netflix queue to catch up on, but everything he does, he does with the same ridiculous grin as he’s been wearing, well, basically all day.

This is literally the best day ever. Fireworks. Dancing. A massive great musical number including a cast of most of New York. There should be jazz bands.

That evening, Bucky looks a little shy, as he drops down onto Steve’s balcony and lets himself inside, once Steve has waved him in from the kitchen. Shy, and bashful. He could almost be blushing. It doesn’t help that Steve’s still got that dumb grin on his face; Bucky keeps catching his eye while they’re eating, smiling, then looking down again. And he’s not exactly the same as he used to be, sure, but he’s still Bucky. Bucky whenever he scraped enough money together to get Steve a new sketchbook or set of pencils for Valentine’s day, or Christmas. Bucky whenever he got Steve flowers on his birthday. Despite all of his show of careless charm and flash, Bucky loved, and loved hard, emotions big and bursting out of him, and he got self-conscious whenever it showed too much. And now - as Bucky’s feet find his under the table and their legs entangle themselves, as both of them lean forward, swaying into each other, as their hands brush on the tabletop and the food is almost entirely forgotten - it’s showing.

Their meal takes about twice as long as it usually does to finish, though neither of them care. This time, Bucky helps Steve clean up, drying one handed after Steve washes, their hips bumping at the sink. Then it’s done, and they stand side by side in the kitchen with the red light of sunset falling on their faces. Then Steve turns his head, or Bucky does, and they’re of a height now, Steve’s eyes on Bucky’s lips and Bucky’s eyes on his, and then they’re kissing. Not chaste, not closemouthed, but wet and open. Soft, gentle. Steve’s hand is on Bucky’s hip and Bucky’s is on his waist, but they’re not pulling into each other. This feels too new, too tender. Steve can feel Bucky’s stubble on his cheek, a loose curl of Bucky’s hair against his chin. Steve can feel his own heartbeat in his head. It feels like their first kiss, on the rooftop in the fireworks, back when they were so, so young. They break to breathe, and Bucky’s hand comes up to trace Steve’s cheekbone, Steve’s eyes open - he didn’t realise he’d closed them. Bucky looks how he feels; wrenched open to the core, longing, euphoric. But he also looks a little scared. A little shy, maybe.

And then that fucking gorgeous smirk is back in the corner of Bucky’s mouth, fitting back into the curl of it like it never left, the knowing, smug look that says, I gotcha, and I know I gotcha. It hits Steve like a kick to the gut.

Bucky pulls away, says, “Night, Stevie,” and leaves. Leaves Steve alone, in his kitchen, with kiss flushed lips and a hard-on.

The absolute fucker. Steve hates him. Steve loves him. Steve can’t believe he ever thought he’d have to relearn loving that jerk asshole fucker. As if he’d ever manage to loose any of that.

 

  
  
The next morning, Bucky’s smirking through breakfast, helps Steve wash up their plates after. By the time they’re finished, the sun’s starting to peek above the height of the buildings, and Brooklyn’s started to look a little more awake. Bucky’s shrugging back into the coat that he’s left on the back of his chair to leave, but before he does, Steve asks, “Do you want to sit out on the balcony with me a while? We could have some more coffee? Or cocoa?”

Bucky nods and smiles. Steve goes to find a jacket of his own without bothering to change his pyjamas underneath. When he comes back, Bucky’s poured them both another coffee from the pot, and added marshmallows and chocolate flakes. As Steve comes in, he smiles mischievously and adds a few more marshmallows to his own mug, so they’re towering precariously above the rim, neglecting Steve’s drink. Steve rolls his eyes, steals a marshmallow off the top, takes his own coffee. They drag the chairs forward so that they’re next to each other in front of the table, facing the city, before they sit. It’s still chilly out, but the sun has warmed the air a little. They sit together in comfortable silence, watch the sun continue to rise, watch New York get up and go to work or school or the overpriced coffee shop down the street that Steve vaguely regrets ever entering in the first place.

Steve has half finished his drink when Bucky says, “Steve. You should know.” Steve looks to him, and his brows are drawn together in a frown, his mouth in a petite pout. Steve waits a few moments, but Bucky says nothing.

“Whatever it is, Buck, you can tell me.” He braces himself for something awful. 

Bucky's eyebrows quirk like, _well duh_ , and now Bucky looks a little pissed off, and it’s such a familiar look that Steve has to hide his smile in his coffee cup. Bucky sighs.

Then he says, “I remember.”

Steve’s heart leaps in his chest. He must show a reaction, because Bucky rushes to add “But, not all. Just some.”

Steve tries to calm himself, tries to be reasonable and process this properly, but he cannot contain his joy. He’d told himself that it wouldn’t have mattered if Bucky hadn’t remembered anything, but of course it did. Even if Bucky was alive, if he’d lost his memories then he’d lost himself. Steve had lost him. He still tries to curb his reaction, because he mustn’t let Bucky think that because Steve is happy Bucky remembers something that means he wishes Bucky remembered more. Whether he does or not, Bucky doesn’t deserve that pressure. So he says, “I’m so glad, Buck. I hope you remember some of the good times?”

Bucky nods, smiling a little, sad smile.

"Your family?"

Another nod, a bigger smile.

Steve swallows. "Us?'

Another smile, and Bucky's gaze slips down, his eyelashes shadowing his cheeks; a little bashful, maybe? Steve takes that for a yes. Steve knew that, hoped that, when Bucky flirted with him, kissed him.

"But you said, not all of it. Do you think you remember more than you've forgotten?"

Bucky’s expression sours, and he looks out to the city, shrugs like _how the hell am I supposed to know_.

"Yeah, fair, I guess. 'Can you remember everything you've forgotten?' Sorry."

Bucky looks back to him, smiling at him this time rather than with him, eyebrow quirked obnoxiously. Steve'll take it.

"Drink your coffee."

Bucky smirks into the rim of his mug. Steve watches the sun rise, and thinks. His joy at this revelation is bittersweet. That those things had been taken from Bucky, that some or even most of Bucky’s memories of his family are now lost forever. Yes, he would burn a hundred Hydra agents alive for this, a thousand. No, it wouldn’t heal the wound.

"Do you...do you remember much of. Since you fell?"

Bucky swallows, grits his teeth, stares straight at the sun as he nods, once, yes.

Steve doesn't want to press, but if Bucky can bear to tell him..."All of it?"

Bucky’s face twists in a grimace, and he looks down, picks at his left cuff with his right hand. 

"Sorry. I shouldn't have asked. I. Bucky." Steve reaches out to him, but Bucky doesn't move. He just holds Bucky's nearest shoulder, his flesh one. After a moment, Bucky tilts his head towards him. Doesn't look at him, just leans into the hand on his arm.

Steve is shocked to realise that for the first time in a long time, he’s going to cry. Steve has barely cried since he woke up from the ice. Steve didn’t cry much to morn everyone he lost, all those who’d lived full lives without him. Steve only really cries when he’s angry, as well as sad. Now, tears hot with rage threaten to flow. He gasps, huffs out a half sob, and Bucky looks to him, alarmed. He smiles through wet eyes, says, “Sorry. I just. I should have saved you from that. All those times you've been there for me when I needed you, and then the one time it was the other way around, and I just, I didn't do anything. Just left you. I'm sorry.”

Bucky's shaking his head before Steve's even finished talking. “You were under the ice,” he says, and leans towards him, his hand hovering uncertainly for a moment before resting on Steve's outstretched arm. Like they're holding each other up. Steve shakes himself - after everything Bucky’s been through, he shouldn’t be the one to have to comfort Steve. Steve shouldn’t be the one falling apart.

“I’m sorry. I’m glad, really I am. I’m happy for you, that you got the memories of your family back. Just, you didn’t deserve to have them taken from you.”

Bucky shrugs, quirks an eyebrow as if to say, _that’s life_ , and Steve hides the pang he feels that this has been Bucky’s normal, and Bucky smiles now that Steve’s ostensibly pulled himself back together, says, “It’s over now.”

“Yeah. Yes.”

Bucky’s smile grows a little softer, a little sweeter. “I’m with you now. I’m not going back.”

And the joy shoots through Steve again, and he says, “Never.” And he means, there is no one and nothing I would not sacrifice so that you will never be in chains again.

God, the way Bucky looks. So sweetly painfully familiar, long lost and returned, and simultaneously foreign, like a tongue pressed into the gap where a tooth used to be. Bucky, clutching his coffee mug with it’s ridiculous marshmallow pile in his right hand, in Brooklyn. Bucky, near silent, metal limbed, physically and mentally mutilated. Hurt so bad, but healing. Steve wants to lean forward to meet Bucky, and kiss him. It would be soft and sweet and taste of coffee and marshmallows and warmth and Bucky. Bucky’s hand would come up to cup Steve’s cheek, and Steve’s would go to Bucky’s neck, and Bucky would make him whimper, and Steve would make him moan. Sometimes they used to do it gentle, but more often they’d fuck like it was a competition where the aim was to cheat, playing dirty, playing rough. So Steve’s first instinct would be to knot his fingers in Bucky’s hair, and then maybe leave his own chair to straddle Bucky’s lap; he’d have to support most of his own weight now, on his feet or his knees or something, he’d figure it out. Maybe start grinding his hips a little -

But in this case, his first instinct is not the one he should follow. No one has touched Bucky with his consent for years. No positive physical contact whatsoever.

The file doesn’t say that Bucky was raped. But it doesn’t say that he wasn’t, either. With all the other shit they’d done to break him - the beatings and the whippings and the drugs and the surgeries with no aesthetic and the sleep deprivation and the solitary confinement - rape seems like it would fit the pattern.

Bucky doesn’t deserve Steve jumping on top of him, doesn’t deserve anything forced on him that he’s not asking for. He’s been through too much to risk getting rough with him before they’ve even talked about this. No longer mute does not equate to the right mindset to consent. Even if Bucky can remember the patterns of their old relationship, he doesn’t want to push Bucky back into them, after years of war - and God knows it was never ideal in the first place. It’s not going to fit anymore, Bucky doubtless needs different things now, and so does Steve. It’s good that Bucky’s taking what he wants, that he remembers their past, that he trusts Steve this much, but this is too valuable to risk messing it up. If they loose the trust that’s built back up between them over months, it will take just as long again to build it back again.Bucky is it for Steve. His one and only. He can wait.

“I’m so glad you remember something, but I’m even more happy to have you back. You can tell me anything you want, about any of it. You know that right?”

Bucky nods.

“It’s not going to change my mind, about you, or about anything. Or, if you want, I have this friend, he can probably help you more than me. You can go to therapy, if you want to. But if not, you don't have to.” Sam wouldn’t be pleased, but as far as Steve’s concerned the modern taste for talking over ever detail of every horror has it’s drawbacks. “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

Bucky smiles, nods. But it’s not his grin. He’s not happy.

Steve racks his head to think of something he’s just said or done that could have put that look on Bucky’s face, like he wants something just out of reach, but he can’t think of anything.

“Anything you want, you just let me know, ok?”

“Yeah, Stevie.” He smiles again.

 

 

  
“I’ve upset him, I think. Or, he wants to hear something and I’m not saying it right.”

“Well, clearly, that’s not great. Obviously it’s important that you talk with him as much as possible, try and figure out what he’s thinking right now. I don’t know what else to tell you, just from what you’ve said - and I know you’re not telling me everything. Y’know, I might be able to give you some actual advice if there wasn’t something you’re keeping from me…?”

Steve told Sam the entire conversation, trying not to leave any of it out. The only thing he hasn’t said, that he doesn’t think Sam knows, is that Steve and Bucky have kissed. That they fucked, before. That they love each other like that, that Steve’s like that, and he thinks of kissing Bucky all the time. That unspoken swollen blown-open feeling in his chest still hasn’t coalesced into a form he can explain to Sam, because as understanding as he is, as simple as the words “I love him” sound, they are not simple.

“I’m not keeping anything from you, Sam!”

“Uh-huh.”

“Oh for God’s sake.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Don’t feel like you have to tell me everything. Even though I expect I am the literal only other person you have talked to about this.”

Steve keeps quiet.

“Oh, come on. You could talk to…you should talk to Natasha! She’s got lots of experience with being a defecting ex-Soviet assassin.”

But as soon as she found out about Bucky, she would know how things were between them, just by looking at his face. Somehow. She would just know. And then she would try to remind him how dangerous Bucky is. And she would probably recommend telling SHIELD or someone about him, which is just not happening. And, “She’s on holiday though. She’s not even in the country, I don’t think, and you know the first thing she’d do is come back. She’d want to see him for herself, she wouldn’t trust that he’s himself, that he’s not trying to hurt me. She’d want to talk to him, at least. She’d freak him out. I don’t know how he’d react to someone new, someone he’s shot, someone with the same training.”

“Yeah, but she might actually know what she’s talking about when she gives you advice. She might be able to give you some useful pointers, stuff not to do, whatever. She’s more likely to be able to guide you through this minefield than me.”

“My life is not a minefield. But, ok, ok, fine. I get your point. You’re probably right.” And he’s not going to be able to keep any of this a secret from her forever. She’s definitely going to find out that Bucky’s here when she next comes over, if she didn’t already the last time, and she’ll probably know about their history ten minutes into the next time they so much as go out for drinks together, whether he means to let her know or not. “As soon as she texts me to tell me she’s back in the country, I’ll tell her all about it.”

“That sounds like a good plan. You’ve already arranged for her to text you?”

“She won’t be able to resist some kind of cheap joke about being back on American soil. It’ll be something awful like, ‘Hey honey, I’m home.’ Or how she's missed the smell of hamburgers and justice. She refers to the whole US of A as ‘my domain’. She thinks she’s hilarious.”

“Alright then. Well, I’ll rest better knowing that I’m not the only one you’re talking to about this. And I hope you at least tell Natasha whatever it is you’re not telling me.”

“Ugh.”

“Great. Or, y’know. You could tell me now. Cut out the middleman-”

“It’s nothing.”

“You are a terrible liar.”

“Bye Sam.”

“Text you soon.”

 

 

  
Steve is used to having the moral high ground. In his opinion, he almost always has the moral high ground. Steve likes the moral high ground, it is a highly tactically defendable position. He is _not_ used to the moral high ground feeling like shit.

He can’t stop thinking about those kisses, the chaste-mouthed peck on the lips that accompanied the first words Bucky spoke since he came home to Steve and the second, wet, warm and open. Bucky hasn’t made another move to kiss him since. There’s a twisted mess in Steve’s chest about it.

He wants Bucky. Kissing Bucky, sitting on his lap, grinding on him, jerking each other off the way they have since teenagers, messy and juvenile and genuine nonetheless. Fucking him, laying him out gentle and sweet and opening him up, kissing and licking and worshipping him for ages before finally pushing in and…or Bucky fucking him, pressing into him and taking exactly what he wants, using Steve to make himself feel good, and letting Steve just take it.

But to kiss him like that, touch him and fuck him now he’s been hurt so bad - if he flinched away from Steve’s mouth, if Steve was too dominating, too rough, too sharp. If he reached for Bucky’s cock to jerk him and he froze up. Or if Bucky read hesitance in Steve’s gentle kisses for reluctance, for rejection. If he left, and didn’t come back - and Steve doesn’t know where he goes, doesn’t know where he sleeps, doesn’t know if he has anywhere else to go for food. Or, worst of all, if Bucky forced himself to ignore discomfort, or an unwelcome touch, if he took it, withstood it out of loving consideration, desperate not to disappoint, or out of misplaced loyalty to the way things were between them, or out of conditioned obligation to the way he’d been trained to thoughtlessly, unquestioningly serve, if he let it happen for whatever reason whilst wishing Steve wouldn’t. If Steve became just exactly like them, another in a long line of people to abuse Bucky.

They could kiss and it could be fine, and they could maybe do more, maybe touch each other, hold each other, maybe even fuck - but anywhere on the gradient between kissing and sex could be a line that shouldn’t be crossed, a step to far. God, Steve wants Bucky so bad, but the myriad of ways Bucky’s been hurt means that Steve can’t predict where that line will be, Bucky might not tell him, and Steve might not even notice that he’s crossed it until the damage has been done. It’s not right for Steve to try to take things further with Bucky until he’s more himself, until he’s talking and happy and free in his mind.

So Steve is not going to kiss Bucky. And if Bucky kisses him, he’s not going to take it further.

It doesn’t change what he wants. In the night, he dreams about fucking Bucky, about Bucky fucking him, about Bucky’s filthy mouth, the memories of when Bucky could pin him down effortlessly and block out the rest of the world with his body mixing up with the memories of Bucky making his serum-enhanced body come five times in a night on R&R in a Parisian hotel merging into the Winter Soldier slamming into him on the Hellicarriers above the Potomac, to Bucky with that fucking stupid fucking spaghetti sauce staining his lips, kissing Steve’s palm, God, and as fucked up as that is all of it turns him on because all of it is Bucky. Steve wants, it’s ridiculous the way he wants. None of those people are who Bucky is now, and all of them are. He can’t help but wonder how Bucky will fuck now - he’s so quiet, will he still talk dirty to Steve? Will he still talk the same way? Does he still think the same way? He’s stronger and bulkier than he’s ever been in his life, he might be able to hold Steve down like when they were teenagers all over again, if they pick the right hold, if Steve doesn’t fight too hard.

He’s not going to find out, not until Bucky is well again. He’s read the file. He knows why this is necessary. But it’s hard, during the next few weeks, when Bucky doesn’t kiss him, doesn’t even come close, and Steve can’t kiss him either. Relearning the friendship they had, without the intimacy that they always used to share in private. It’s hard when Bucky’s bleary eyed through breakfast, smiles to greet him at dinner, helps to clean up after their meals with him, dumps his laundry bag on Steve’s balcony with an obnoxiously large grin, when he hums loudly with pleasure when Steve gets up early to fetch him the new seasonal pumpkin spice latte from the overpriced shop to have with breakfast, when he pauses, sees Steve’s most recent drawing of him in his sketchbook on the coffee table, and says, “that’s really good, Steve,” before he leaves one evening. It’s hard every moment that Bucky proves that he is most definitely himself, despite all of it. He’s still so quiet, where he always used to be talkative, and his movements are less expressive now, more subdued, but he is doubtlessly himself. And if Bucky is himself, why is Steve deliberately acting against his wishes and preventing them from having something that they both want?

It’s probably the hardest the evening they have wine with dinner, and Bucky drinks about three quarters of the bottle himself, because Steve never really acquired the taste for wine, and it doesn’t do anything for him anyway. Bucky drinks enough that he must be drinking faster than his body can break it down, and his version of the serum probably isn’t as effective as Steve’s, because he gets a little heavy-lidded and smiley. And when he goes to leave he comes and stands in front of Steve for a moment, considering - and Steve is attempting to force himself not to show any of his desire on his face, not to let his gaze drift to Bucky’s lips - and all Bucky does is reach across the meagre distance between them with his right hand and press his fingers into the soft inside of Steve’s wrist, stroke his thumb over his forearm. Steve’s trying, but he can’t stop himself leaning forwards, bending his head down to gaze at where Bucky’s, well, he’s borderline holding Steve’s hand, but his rough fingers stroking over the sensitive skin of his wrist feel something pretty far from innocent. Bucky leans into Steve too, and they’re so close together, and then Bucky’s nuzzling into Steve’s neck, gently, slightly. It would be so easy to just turn his head and…

Steve leans back, and Bucky pulls away completely. The buzz the alcohol seemed to give him has gone from his eyes. Now he has a look on his face like he’s tasted semolina pudding. His face wipes blank in a heartbeat in a way that looks unnatural, and then he’s gone.

Moral high ground, Steve reminds himself. But that look on Bucky’s face, and Steve caused it by pushing him away, by taking it slow. But he is pretty much sure that he is in the right. Bucky’s been hurt so badly, lost almost everything. He deserves someone to look out for him while he still probably can’t.

 

 

 

However, despite his doubt regarding his management of their love life, Steve still has complete conviction about his standpoint on other areas of Bucky’s wellbeing. Physical, he is certain of. Bucky needs food, drink, warmth, shelter, and a safe place to sleep. Bucky does not answer questions about whether he is getting all of them or not. If Steve tentatively asks if Bucky slept well, he shrugs. If he asks whether Bucky needs more blankets, if he’s warm enough, he gets a polite shake of the head. If he asks outright, “Bucky, do you have a safe and comfortable place to sleep?” he gets a “Sure,” that encourages him not to ask any more questions on the subject. But Steve is still very sure of his moral footing on this one, so he asks, “But where do you sleep?” In reply, he gets a glare that clearly says mind your own business. Which, yes, normally Steve would. If it were anyone other than Bucky. But “Sure” is not an even remotely adequate answer to perturb his worrying. Is Bucky sleeping on the streets, hidden away somewhere? At a homeless shelter? An abandoned building or something? Is it hygienic? Does he have running water? Is it somewhere he can feel safe? Does he have his own apartment? If so, why does he still get Steve do to his laundry - or is that just Bucky being a lazy shit? He’s showering, somewhere, and Steve’s pretty sure that he’s also brushing his teeth, but Bucky could very easily be sneaking into private bathrooms or public gyms or swimming pools or homeless shelters to do those things without having an adequate place to sleep. Steve wouldn’t be fretting about it all so much, but it’s getting colder in the evenings now, and Bucky still won’t come inside at night. Steve’s told him he’s welcome enough times, he doesn’t know what else he can do. Every morning he gets up and Bucky’s shivering on his balcony with cold hands and a flushed face, every evening now he leaves in the dark. But Bucky wants him to keep his nose out of it. And respecting boundaries is very important. So he does.

 

 

 

But tonight, it’s snowing, and Steve can’t just let this happen. He knows that going to Bucky instead of letting Bucky come to him generally isn’t a good idea, only pisses him off or makes him tense up, but this time he’s prepared to risk it. This time, he is prepared to insist. Even if this is causes a setback, halts the growth of Bucky’s trust in him, he has to try. Because the weather-woman said it’d drop to 10 degrees tonight, and he refuses to let Bucky freeze. Not again. So this time, after their meal is finished when Bucky turns to disappear out the open balcony door, Steve says, “Bucky, wait,” in his commander’s voice, and he hates himself immediately because Bucky does, even though it’s obvious that he’s tense, like he’s about to bolt, his body angled towards the open door, but he doesn’t. Because Steve gave him an order not to. Steve steels himself. This is for Bucky’s own good. The moral high ground is definitely his.

“Will you stay inside?” Carefully phrased as a question, and he keeps his tone light. “Just to tonight, just to sleep, because it’s so cold.”

Bucky didn’t move, didn’t speak.

“Please Buck. I worry about you. I know you’re tough, I know you can look out for yourself, but - for me? Please?”

Bucky turns around, and his face is impassive. Blank. Like the Soldier’s.

"Unless you can tell me that you have somewhere warm and safe to sleep?" Bucky just watches him, expressionless.

“But you don’t have to. I’m not - this isn’t an order.”

Bucky smiles lopsidedly then, says, “I know.” His voice is quiet and soft.

“Please Buck? I just don’t want to think of you being cold out there...” Steve shivers, almost on cue, standing as he is in pyjama bottoms and a t-shirt with the cold wind blowing in from outside. “You can sleep in the spare room, or the couch, wherever you’d like. I just want you to be comfortable.” Bucky’s eyes track the slight movement of his shoulders, linger on his arms, and as he looks Steve feels goose bumps form. “It’s just. They’re predicting snow for tonight.” Bucky’s jaw works, and then he nods, jerkily. Steve beams. Bucky turns and closes the balcony door. When he turns back his eyes dart around the room, the exits, the dark corners. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other and back, subtly, starts picking at his left hand with his right’s fingernails. Then takes a halting step towards Steve, then another. They stand face to face for a moment. Steve says, “Thanks for humouring me, Buck.”

Bucky says, “Yeah.” But he doesn’t look pissed off anymore, or, worse, blank. He just looks kind of resigned, and amused, and only a little nervous. Bucky breaks eye contact, takes off the coat he’d just put on, and lays it across the counter that separates the kitchen from the living room.

“Where would you like to sleep? I don’t have a guest room, but you can have my bed?”

“No. Thank you. I can take the couch.”

Steve was kind of expecting that, and although he should know better than to make a house guest sleep on the couch, Bucky’s comfort in unfamiliar surroundings is the priority. “Ok, well, as long as you’re in the warm.”

It’s a little surreal to see Bucky standing in his living room looking so awkward and out of place. He’s normally so at ease, when they share meals, but now, with the door closed and the windows darkened with night his jaw is set, his figure is dark too, and oddly smudged looking in the warm, clean setting of Steve’s apartment. The way he holds himself still hints at efficient violence, in some undefinable way. Steve supposes he can understand - Bucky’s been very scared for a very long time. It makes sense that he would respond to unfamiliar situations with fear and defence. He knows he shouldn’t to call attention to it, in case it makes Bucky feel even more insecure, but the urge to comfort him wins and he says, tentatively, “You don’t have to be worried, Buck. It’s safe for you, here.”

And Bucky says, again, “I know.” Then, with his one right hand, he lifts and drags the sofa so it’s at a 45 degree angle to the way it was, and he can see both the front door and the balcony door from it.

Well, ok then. If that’s what Bucky would rather do.

Then Bucky slowly and gracefully sinks to the sofa, glancing up at Steve as he does so. He says, “Just to be sure,” with a cock of his head and a smile.

Steve says, “I’ll go fetch some blankets.”

He then proceeds to pile as many blankets and cushions as he owns into his arms, including fetching his own feather duvet from his bed, and a blanket made of the softest material he has ever felt, which is apparently called micro-fleece and is definitely a gift sent from heaven. He spills the whole lot in front of Bucky in a mound. Bucky picks out the duvet and one blanket, plus one pillow, and raises his eyebrows at the rest.

“Just to be sure,” Steve says, and Bucky laughs.

Fuck. All those months when Bucky wouldn’t even talk. The years of missing him before that. There have been times when Steve would have killed a man to hear Bucky laugh again.

Steve swallows before he asks, “Will you be comfortable here? Will you be able to sleep?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re sure you don’t want my bed?”

“No.”

“You don’t want to shower, or anything? You know where the bathroom is, and I have towels, a spare toothbrush -”

“No. But thank you.” Bucky wriggles into his bed on the sofa, and is just about able to fit, with his feet propped up on the end and his head at a slight angle. Steve has a big couch. Of course, Bucky is still fully clothed. His shoes are still on. But if that’s how he wants to sleep, Steve’s loath to stop him. Bucky’s free will is important, he didn’t need Sam to tell him that. Bucky probably has a lot of negative associations with nakedness.

“Well, if you’re sure. But if you change your mind, I’ll be in here,” he jerks his thumb at the door to his bedroom. “Unless you’d rather I stay?”

He meant to keep a lookout, to act as another layer of security, but of course Bucky raises his eyebrows at that. Steve hurries to correct himself, but before he can Bucky says, “No, it’s fine. You sleep wherever you’d like.” His tone isn’t bitter, but vaguely amused.

“Alright then.” Steve doesn’t want to leave - this is the first time Bucky’s agreed to stay this long this near Steve, the first time he’s let Steve take care of him like this, Steve doesn’t want to just let it go. But he can’t hover near Bucky endlessly, he’s not here to supervise him. He said he’d let Bucky in to sleep, and that’s what he’ll do; he has to stay true to his words. “Goodnight then, Bucky.”

“Night, Steve,” comes the soft reply.

Steve makes himself turn and leave, and is just about to shut his bedroom door when he hears Bucky say, so quietly, “Thank you.” He opens his door all the way, and smiles as he says, “You’re welcome, Bucky.”

Steve sleeps under his lightweight summer duvet and one blanket. In bed, he tosses and turns for a few minutes, but it’s actually really late now, and he is tired. There’s a mantra in his head of Bucky’s here, he’s here, he’s in my living room, he’s making his own decisions, he thanked me, he trusts me, he was close enough to touch, if I open the door now I’ll see him, he wants this and we both want this and all I have to do is go out there and apologise but he stubbornly ignores it, and eventually he drifts into sleep.

 

 

  
In the morning when he wakes, Steve lies in bed and stares at the ceiling for a few moments. There’s something important, something he’s supposed to remember.

Bucky. Bucky’s asleep in his living room.

Steve sits up quick enough to give him head rush. He should - he should make them breakfast.

He gets up and pads as quietly as he can, to peak around his door and into the living room. Bucky’s a rumpled bundled heap on the couch, his hair a tangle spilling out at one end. At the almost nonexistent sound of Steve’s door opening, one eye opens, then closes again.

“Morning, Buck,” Steve says, in his most irritatingly chipper voice.

Bucky grunts.

Steve goes over to the kitchen, and sets the coffeemaker working. He checks his cupboards and decides that today is pancake day. Although he is not being deliberately sadistic, much, the clattering of pans and bowls and the stirring of batter is enough to rouse Bucky up out of the horizontal bundle and into a vertical bundle. He then migrates over from the couch, and drops down onto one of Steve’s chairs with a sound that would probably be a thump if he weren’t so padded. Steve notices that he is still wearing his shoes. He sets a mug of coffee in front of Bucky, with cream and sugar, and this time the grunt is a little more gracious.

Steve is unsubtly stifling a snigger when it strikes him that Bucky is usually nowhere near this tired. Perhaps he wasn’t able to feel safe enough to sleep in Steve’s apartment?

“Did you sleep ok?” he asks, as casually as he can.

“Hmph.” Bucky says. Then, “Too well.”

“What do you mean?” Steve struggles not to let the worry into his voice.

Bucky probably hears it anyway, because he frowns, then sighs. “More than…more than I’m used to. I didn’t used to get enough to dream. Adjusting is…unpredictable.”

There was nothing about this in the file, but it makes sense. Natasha said that Hydra had probably used a multitude of techniques to keep Bucky in line, both to control his mind and also to ensure he felt micromanaged and powerless. Not enough to dream - without a proper REM cycle, the brain isn’t able to function normally, Steve learned that from SHIELD doctors when he was suffering from insomnia, soon after he’d first come out of the ice. So Hydra had deprived Bucky of even his most fundamental bodily needs to keep him under their control.

Steve likes to think he is not a violent person, and likes to think that when he is, he has justice on his side. But at this precise moment, he cannot help but feel a surge of savage satisfaction go through him at the thought of how the Triskelion burned, of how all those Hydra agents probably died painfully, terrified and alone. Alexander Pierce in particular.

“Right,” he says. “Well, if there’s anything I can do to help, let me know. I’m guessing you already know how to use the internet?”

Use of modern technology must be part of the Winter Solider’s training, the file insisted, and sure enough Bucky nods with a roll of his eyes like, _of course_.

“I’m sure there’s a lot of information out there about different techniques to help you get off to sleep, if that’s the issue.”

“No,” Bucky says. “It’s fine. Just took a little getting used to.” He sounds matter of fact, calm, honest. He wants to be believed. Steve chooses to do so.

“Alright.”

Steve puts the plate with the first pancake on it in front of Bucky, along with some maple syrup, and Bucky digs in.

After breakfast, Bucky shuffles back over to the couch, unwinding from his blanket cocoon, revealing that he is still fully dressed. Then he meanders back over to help Steve clean up, even though Steve’s already nearly finished. “You timed that well,” he ribs. Bucky grins obnoxiously, then goes back to the living room, presumably to get his coat. Steve says, “If you want, there’s a spare toothbrush in the bathroom.”

Steve hears the smile in Bucky’s voice as he asks, “You trying to tell me something, punk?”

“No! No.” And it’s true. Bucky’s breath doesn’t smell; he must be brushing his teeth, wherever it is that he sleeps most of the time. The offer had been almost absentminded.

“Sure,” Bucky says, disbelieving, but makes his way to Steve’s bathroom anyway. Steve hears the tap running and splashing noises as he scrubs the pan.

Then Bucky comes back to the kitchen. “Thanks,” he says, and Steve replies with a heartfelt “You’re welcome.”

Bucky leaves, and although he doesn’t talk much, Steve feels lonelier in his absence.

 

 

  
The weather doesn’t improve all day. When Steve goes for his morning jog in the park he has to double back for his jacket, despite his exceptionally high tolerance to the cold. There are kids, too young for school, bundled up into coats, hats, gloves, scarves, who are absolutely loving the snow that settled on the ground overnight. It’s wreaked the predictable havoc on traffic, although the effects are less noticeable now that rush hour’s over. Of course, the snow also looks beautiful. Crystalline fluff coating branches, railings and paths, ice on the ponds, even. The bright blaring city highlighted and subdued by white, reverse shadows on top of every surface. It’s always made him want to reach for a sketchbook, even when his mother and Bucky used to insist that he stay indoors rather than out in the freezing weather. Some years, he was sick enough at this time of year that he could only see the snow from his window - those years, he had a lot of practice sketching the view of his snow-covered street over and over. It always irritated him that he could never quite catch the way it looked, on paper, white on white. Still, this might be the year he finally manages it; he’ll try again when he gets home. He can remember only a few winters when he was well enough that when it snowed, Bucky and him went out to play in the streets. Once when they were very young, maybe two or three times when they were older. He remembers gripping onto Bucky for dear life in the icy streets, and surprise snowball attacks, and pieces of freezing ice shoved directly down his neck, underneath his clothes. He remembers the freezing cold making Bucky’s cheeks flush red, as well as the tip of his nose. And afterward, once, when they got home, both of them stripping off all of their clothes and piling under the covers together, warm hands chafing life back into frozen limbs.

As he jogs through the park and the streets, sure now on strong legs and new shoes, Steve just hopes that Bucky has somewhere warm to stay now - that all the homeless of New York do.

Unsurprisingly, when he gets back to his apartment, his sketches of New York under snow all feature Bucky.

 

 

  
That evening, Steve makes them hot vegetable soup with toasted cheese sandwiches. He very deliberately hasn’t moved the couch back to it’s normal place since Bucky slept in it last night, and hasn’t moved the blanket cocoon Bucky left dumped there except to neaten it. He’s prepared another pleading speech with which to convince Bucky with, but he’s pretty confident that the actual snow on the ground will be enough to persuade him to sleep in the warmth and safety of Steve’s apartment. Sure enough, when he asks, “Would you like to stay and sleep here tonight?” after dinner, Bucky nods amicably.

That night, it’s easier for Steve to sleep than it was before, now that he feels certain that Bucky will be there when he wakes up. Of course, he still can’t stop himself from thinking about what he and Bucky could be doing instead of sleeping.

 

 

  
Steve’s lying half-awake in bed, an already-forgotten nightmare having roused him from sleep, when he hears the sounds of soft footsteps padding down the short corridor outside his room. He doesn’t even have time to panic before he realises it must be Bucky. The footsteps pause outside his room for a moment. He wonders whether Bucky will come in, what he’ll do if he does…

The footsteps move on, down the hall. Steve breathes out, realising as he does that he’d been holding his breath. He doesn’t stir, listens to Bucky moving in a circuit all the way around the apartment before he ends up back in the living room, and the footsteps stop. He feels oddly safe; Bucky’s keeping the night watch. It could mean that Bucky doesn’t feel safe enough to sleep the whole night through, but it could just be force of habit. Restlessness after Bucky was woken by a nightmare of his own.

And, as he drifts back into sleep, Steve realises he wouldn’t have heard Bucky at all if he hadn’t wanted to be heard. He must have taken off his shoes to be quiet enough not to wake Steve, and Steve’s sure that it would be effortless for him to be completely silent in only his socks if he wanted to. Bucky was being considerate enough to let Steve hear him move around if he was awake, without disturbing his sleep if he wasn’t. Steve slept with a warm feeling in his chest, and woke with the conviction to make Bucky the best breakfast waffles he could make.

 

 

  
It’s night. It’s not that late yet, Steve’s only just finished cleaning up the mess left over from dinner with Bucky, and said goodnight to him. He’s in bed, but he’s not tired yet, so he’s mucking around on his tablet, trying to figure out this drawing software that Sam had recommended. He hears the door creak, and looks up to see that Bucky’s at the door to his room. He’s still almost fully clothed, but he’s taken off his jacket and shoes. He’s a shadowy charcoal silhouette against the chalk of the light of the hallway, hesitating.

“Steve?” His voice is so quite it’d be drowned out by a car outside.

Steve sits up in the half-lit room, says, “Yeah, I’m awake Buck. Is there something you need?”

“No, I just. I was wondering if I could...”

“Whatever it is, it’s fine to ask.”

Steve can sees Bucky’s shoulders rise as he takes a deep breath. “Back in Brooklyn. We used to sleep in the same bed.”

Steve moved into Bucky’s bed the first winter they lived together, because Bucky said it might help to keep him healthy through the worst of the cold weather, and it had. And then he’d never really moved out of it. Then they really only kept two beds in the bedroom for the sake of appearances, and for the rare occasions they were fighting, or Steve was ill. Bucky normally used it as storage for his dirty clothes. Steve was small enough to fit in Bucky’s bed with him, and they’d share every night that wasn’t the sweltering height of summer. Sometimes, if Steve was ill or one of them was grumpy or tired, they just slept, but most nights they’d fuck.

“Yes.” Steve says, carefully.

A flicker of irritation passes over Bucky’s face, but he settles on a twisted half-smile. “I’m not trying to…we don’t have to do that. I’m not -” He sighs, tight and frustrated and, Steve thinks, embarrassed. “I miss you. It’s dumb. You’re right there. But we don’t. I’d just like it if we could be near each other.”

“Of course,” Steve’s voice sounds choked, so he clears his throat. Yes, he knows exactly what Bucky means.

He’s fine, really. But he’d missed Bucky so much for so long that even now that he’s got him back it doesn’t feel real sometimes.

To hold Bucky close. To breathe him in. To feel his warmth. “Of course we can do that.”

Bucky takes one step, seeming awkward more than anxious, then another, then comes around the side of the bed that Steve’s gesturing to.

Steve swallows. The moral high ground is seeming a little shaky right now, - he wants this so much, so selfishly - but the way Bucky looks, hopeful but guarded, trusting and awkward, combines to make Steve certain that this is something that Bucky needs, so if Steve can give it to him then he will. Steve pulls back the covers on the other side of the bed, shifts himself over further, so that Bucky has enough room to lie there if he doesn’t want to be touched. Bucky gets into the bed, and Steve feels the mattress dip. And then they’re lying in the dark, face to face, just exactly like they have a thousand times before. Like they haven’t done for years. Steve can see Bucky’s eyes glinting in the dark, staring, but not wary.

“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep through the whole night here?” This is the first time Steve’s let Bucky know that he’s aware of Bucky’s midnight wanderings, but Bucky’s complete lack of reaction at the question proves to him that Bucky never intended to hide it.

“I don’t know.”

Bucky’s eyes gaze into his searchingly, then flick away, then back again. He wants something, but he’s too afraid to ask. Steve’s aghast - he’s always tried to show Bucky as clearly as he can that he can have anything from Steve that he wants. Except…

“Do you...do you want me to touch you?”

Bucky nods.

Steve has a choice. He can refuse, and make Bucky feel rejected, the same way he has before, make him run away from Steve, leaving him with his fucking moral high ground and nothing else. Or, he can say yes, and give Bucky the comfort that they both need. Just as long as he can do that without leading Bucky on.

The pause between them stretches out until Bucky looks down and away, curling into himself, dejected, and it’s obvious that he thinks he’s been refused again, and that it’s making him miserable. So then it’s not a choice for Steve anymore.

Steve, slowly and carefully and telegraphing his movements clearly, reaches out his right hand and lays it on Bucky’s left shoulder. Bucky flinches a little, his lips parted, eyes wide. As Bucky relaxes into Steve’s touch, he sighs out and the look of relief on his face is beautiful enough to make Steve’s heart swell with love for him, and tragic enough to make him hate himself. No, Steve is not going to refuse Bucky a basic human need like contact, not anymore.

But he’s not going to let it be anything other than platonic either. It wouldn’t make sense, after how far apart they’ve been for so long, after what Bucky’s been through. And they don’t need anything else. They just need to be close.

“This good?” Steve asks, checking.

“Yes,” Bucky says. There’s a smile on his face, growing from something small and pleased into a big dopey grin.

Steve slides his hand down to Bucky’s ribcage. Bucky shivers, hard, as if Steve’s fingers were ice.

“Yes,” Bucky says again, his voice a quiet gasp.

Steve forces himself to stay calm. Just closeness. Just contact. This, just this, seems to be what Bucky needs right now. Steve can give this to him, nothing more and nothing less.

Steve squashes down the realisation that enough time with no physical contact that did not equate to pain might make even the sanest person a little desperate. And that Bucky has been alone for seventy years, and probably awake for too much of it.

“Can you - more?” Bucky’s leaning into Steve’s hand now, twisting his body so that his side is closer to Steve, by just a fraction of an inch.

Bucky is telling Steve what it is he wants. He just has to be careful, and this will be fine, won’t blur any boundaries.

Bucky interprets his hesitation as reluctance. “Steve, c’mon.” Bucky’s voice is more impatient than Steve’s heard it yet. “I know you don’t want to...go further. That’s fine. Just touch me.”

“Yeah, I know. Ok.” Steve slides his hand down Bucky’s body so it slips beneath his shirt, so he’s touching Bucky’s skin. He feels hot, and when Steve touches him he melts like butter. Steve realises now that there has always been tension in Bucky’s body before, even at his most relaxed, because this, this is what it looks like when Bucky is truly relaxed. He’d forgotten. Bucky’s eyes roll back in his head before his lids fall closed, and his lashes are dark shadows on his cheeks. Now he’s like this, all the stress lines around his closed eyes fade. His lips are open, his breathing slow and deep and even. He looks almost like he’s sleeping, apart from how he shudders now and then, as Steve’s hand moves back up to Bucky’s waist, his ribcage, back to his hip again, but they’re just gentle ripples up his spine. Bucky hums throatily once, in thanks, perhaps, and then it’s so quiet, all Steve can hear is Bucky’s breathing and his own.

Steve doesn’t sleep for a long, long time.

 

 

  
In the morning, Steve wakes before Bucky. The blinds are still drawn, but dawn creeps under them, slowly. Steve lies there for ten, maybe twenty minutes, watching as golden sunlight gradually paints itself over Bucky’s eyelashes. His body’s warm and sprawled relaxed next to Steve. His mouth’s slightly open, his breath soft and silent. He’s got his right hand curled up next to his face in a way that’s ridiculously endearing, giving him a misleading air of childlike innocence. His left is in the space between their bodies, and in the yellow sunlight it’s silver looks transformed to gold.

Steve wants to kiss high up on Bucky’s cheekbones, under his eyes, to kiss away the shadows there, and lower down, next to his mouth. He wants to kiss the corners of his jaw where the stubble would scratch his lips. He wants to kiss Bucky’s petal-pink eyelids, delicately veined with lilac. He wants to kiss Bucky’s forehead and his temples where the blood beats, the closest he can get to Bucky’s mind. He wants to kiss the tip of Bucky’s nose, silly and playful. He wants to kiss the little divot of Bucky’s chin. He wants to kiss Bucky’s lips.

He doesn’t. He can’t. And Bucky looks so peaceful sleeping.

Eventually, Steve hears Bucky’s breathing speed up almost imperceptibly. Bucky’s eyes flick open, and he’s all the way awake, straight away, like they always had to be in the field. Then he sees Steve, sees where they are, and his eyes droop back closed again. He makes a tiny little grunt of greeting, then, to all appearances, goes back to sleep.

“Good morning to you too, Buck,” Steve says, and goes to put the coffee machine on. He also makes pancakes with golden syrup again, after how well that went down last time. He’s still flipping them in the air with enough batter left for a couple more when Bucky emerges from the bedroom. He has with him the duvet, which is draped around him so he looks like a burrito. When he gets close enough to smell the coffee brewing Bucky smiles at him, sleepy eyed.

Breakfast is quiet and calm, punctuated only by Steve asking, “How did you sleep?” and Bucky replying, “Really well. Thank you,” with a sincere and heartwarming smile, a cousin of the one that helped him charm his way into the panties of a large proportion of the female population of Brooklyn, which has Steve looking down and blushing.

Once they’re done eating, Bucky helps him clear up companionably, then puts on his shoes and jacket at the table. When he’s done, he gets up to leave, and then pauses. He looks at Steve’s face for a moment, considering. Then he tugs Steve to face him, steps up close, into Steve’s personal space. He says, “You’ve got a little…” and swipes his thumb over Steve’s cheek, right next to his lips. Steve is frozen, staring, longing. Bucky pulls his hand away, and there’s a smear of maple syrup on his thumb. He holds eye contact with Steve as he licks it off. Steve can’t stop his eyes flicking to Bucky’s lips. Can’t stop himself from imagine licking into Bucky’s mouth under the pretence of taking back that sweet taste. Bucky watches him want, and smirks around his thumb. He pulls it out of his mouth, pursing his lips up as much as he can as he does so. Steve forces himself not to react.

After a few moments, the playful look fades from Bucky’s face, to be replaced with his old habitual blankness. “See you, Rogers,” he says, and leaves.

Steve breathes out a long sigh. He’s definitely more disappointed than relieved about the way that went.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic could not have happened without my treasured cheerleaders, protectthesandwich and Supernatural42424 who have listened to me complain about writing this for stupidly long time and are wonderful people who deserve actual medals. The best bros. The best.


End file.
